Web site launches with games where players help make computers smarter

PITTSBURGH -- Carnegie Mellon University researchers hope Web surfers will spend their free time playing Internet-based games to help other people's and businesses' computers get smarter.

Wednesday, the researchers launched www.gwap.com with five games designed to help computers with tasks they can't automatically do.

"There are a lot of things that computers cannot do, but we'd somehow like to get them done," said Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor of computer science. "So what we're doing is getting humans to do it for us."

The tasks include improving computer searches for images or audio clips. For example, if you search on the Web for "sad songs," a search engine will generally show you links to audio files that have the word sad in the filename. But by getting people to describe audio clips as sad in online games like "Tag a Tune," researchers can improve searches for audio files.

Users older than 13 are matched with other players on five games, with others to be added later. Among the games are:

ESP, in which opposing players are shown a picture and try to guess what words the other player will use to describe the image. The game's goal is to help improve image searches on the Internet by creating descriptions of uncaptioned images. The game has already been licensed by Google as Google Image Labeler.

Matchin, in which opposing players are shown the two images and asked to choose which one they like best. The more the players choose the same image, the more points they rack up. The goal is to help computers recognize what images people would prefer to see when they are searching for pictures on the Web.

Squigl, where two players are given a word describing part of an image and must trace what the word is describing. Points are awarded based on how similarly the players traced the image. The goal is to help computers more easily recognize images.

Camera memory card uses wireless to label photos

NEW YORK -- A wireless memory card for digital cameras now comes with an added twist: Besides making it easier to store and share photos, the latest version of the Eye-Fi card also helps sort images by location.

Eye-Fi Explore, due out next month, taps into a database run by Skyhook Wireless. That company sends trucks up and down streets to scan for home wireless routers or commercial hotspots and record the unique identifying code and location of each.

The Eye-Fi card can sense the Wi-Fi access point that happens to be nearby, regardless of whether that access point is open or password-protected. The unique code for that access point gets matched with what's in the Skyhook database. When you take a photo, Eye-Fi automatically attaches data about the current location, as determined by Skyhook.

"Today, that's a very manual and time-consuming process," said Jef Holove, chief executive of Mountain View, Calif.-based Eye-Fi Inc. "We're saving people the time and the hassle."