A Good Cause: reCAPTCHA

I love helping out, so much so, that sometimes people have to push me off and say, "You're helping too much!". I don't necessarily think thats a bad thing, but yes, I would love to help out and get others to help out too once in a while, without being told off. Ahem. 

Anyway, if you have the time, do watch this (embedded) brilliant TED video about "reCAPTCHA". Some may already know about CAPTCHA. It was an attempt to block spammers and spam bots from leaving ludicrous and irrelevant comments and links on your webpage or website.

But then, the people at google came up with reCAPTCHA. The thought behind it was, "How about while people write those silly words in word verification forms, they also help translate scanned books which the computer can't do." What a great idea!

What is reCAPTCHA?

"reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows." -- Google.

"reCAPTCHA asks commenters to read two words from a book. One of these words proves that they are a human, not a computer. The other word is a word that a computer couldn't read. Because the user is known to be a human, the reading of that word is probably correct. So you don't get comment spam, and the world gets books digitized. Everybody wins!" 

Apparently, hundreds and thousands of people type in word-verification forms on a daily basis. By typing in that second and "extra/unnecessary" word (while you're cursing the double amount of work you need to do to get to that page, your "attempt"at transcribing that extra word just helped properly scan and transcribe a paragraph from an old book. 

Wouldn't it be amazing if this very small self-less act of ours helped translate millions of books which are being digitized right now? This is a major step forward for libraries all around the world, digitizing forever old books that may rot away and allow us easy access to them. What a lovely good deed for the day, don't you think?

Lend a hand, just 10 seconds of your time. If you come across reCAPTCHA (as you will on my blog if you comment) fill in those two strange words and help digitize a book.

PS: If you want to have a go, or just help out because you feel like you want to contribute click on the "reCAPTCHA" button on the right sidebar and it will take you to their site and you can start helping out right away!