Organization Monkey

i was just sifting through my bloglines account, a web-based software program which very neatly organizes the latest posts on all the blogs i like to read.  i got to the posts at open access news and saw a link to an article that appeared to be about metadata.  i clicked on the link, read the article, thought i’d like to know more, clicked over to the site being discussed, see that the url is from usc.edu.  i scrolled around on the site and saw that it is indeed a project going on RIGHT AT MY OWN UNIVERSITY, and i wouldn’t have known anything about it without the blog post.  it’s about connections, serendipity, and potential collaborations.  that said, i’m on my way to email the creators of the project just to say hello.

for a few years now i’ve been interested in how everyday people describe images as opposed to how image experts describe them, and how the difference in vocabulary may affect the way search engines for images are constructed.  i did my master’s paper on such a topic.  i keep up with what’s going on in image indexing research, and it’s all very serious, focused, and academic.  and then i stumbled upon google’s beta image labeler, which is also about image indexing for retrieval, and it’s all very fun, whimsical, and competitive.  you’re paired with someone unknown and you type in words to describe an image on the screen.  you get points when you and your partner use the same words.  you’ve got 2 minutes to get through as many images as you can, but you only move on to the next image when your word matches your partner’s.  this may be more addictive than weboggle.  go now, give it a try.