The Galaxy Zoo project, now changing gears into publication phase, has opened mountains of astronomical observation data for processing and analysis by amateur astronomers over the internet. People were offered raw data (images) which they could try to make sense of, identifying unusual, strange, or (conversely) evident bodies such as galaxies. The result are mountains of identifications and classifications that could not have been done by the short-handed teams of professional astronomers in anything like a reasonable length of time... ane even some really, genuinely strange discoveries such as the one called "Hanny's Voorwerp", voorwerp being the Dutch term for "object" and Hanny being the amateur who spotted a truly unusual ring in a lost corner of the space that was scanned and opened for analysis. You can see further detail through the links.

Beyond the immediate discoveries, this is a great example of how to tap the work and enthusiasm of "prosumers" (those aficionados with equipment, time and talent enough to do some serious work) to enable further professional work. The incentives, the processes, the infrastructure, and even the way to deal with the results are all worth looking over and learning, because it's one thing to talk about the wonders of crowdsourcing, and another to effectively and meaningfully implement it.

Bringen Sie Emotionalität in Ihre Produkt/- und Unternehmenspräsentation auf HEROLD.at mit einer kurzen Diashow oder einem professionellen Unternehmensvideo:
* Komplett mit Hintergrundmusik und professionellem Sprecher
* Flash-Technologie für maximale Kompatibilität
* Vorteil: Unterscheidung zu Mitbewerb

Ist der Herold damit unter die Videoproduzenten gegangen?

Kaum bzw. jein - heute morgen flatterte mir via Unijobs-Newsletter folgende Job-Ausschreibung rein:

Filmemacher/in für 30 Sek Videospots
Wir suchen Filmemacher/innen welche 30 Sekunden Spots für Kleingewerbe Betriebe in ganz Österreich drehen wollen.

Das interessante daran ist die Menge. Es werden in ganz Österreich über 2000 Spots gedreht werden das heißt, es gibt genug Arbeit für mehrere Leute.

Bezahlung 100 Euro pro Spot
Zusatzgeschäfte siehe unten

Irr' ich mich oder soll mit dem Verweis auf 2000 Spots in ganz Österreich dem ganzen so ein bisserl ein Wettbewerbscharakter angedichtet werden? Um einen Wettbewerb geht es aber ganz und gar nicht - die Videos sollen ja an Herold-Kunden weiter verkauft werden, z.b. an Firmen wie Wallner-Pool und zu einem unbekannten Preis (aber sicher nicht für 100 Euro, ist mein Tipp), die Ausschreibung verlinkt auch direkt auf herold.at/video, wo die Videos als Dienstleistung angeboten werden:

Ihr persönliches Video oder Ihre Diashow können Sie direkt bei Ihrem HEROLD Medienberater anfordern. Bei weiteren Fragen kontaktieren Sie bitte unser Kundenservice unter 02236 401 - 133. Wir stehen Ihnen Montag - Donnerstag (werktags) von 8:00 - 18:00 sowie am Freitag von 08:00 - 15:00 telefonisch zur Verfügung.

Tja - darf man das jetzt auch als Crowdsourcing bezeichnen? Und wie lässt sich das vereinbaren, dass der Herold den Kunden einerseits ein professionelles Unternehmensvideo verspricht, "In weniger als einer Stunde vor Ort produziert", und andererseits ganz klar auf Studierende setzt, die das ganze nicht nur produzieren, sondern natürlich auch eigenes Equipment (bzw. wird das faktisch wohl häufig Equipment der FHs sein) mitbringen sollen. Hier nochmal der Wortlaut der Auschreibung:

Anforderungen

* Studium oder prakt. Erfahrung mit Kamera und Schnitt
* Equipment ist selbst mitzubringen
* Selbstständige Arbeit
* freie Terminwahl
* 1 Stunde drehen nach Shotlist (5-10min Material, nicht mehr) Dreh ohne Ton, Licht, Regie,
* 1 Stunde schneiden von Video (kein Audio)

Beispiel Videos : Link in Browser kopieren
www.herold.at/video

Was ihr benötigt:

* Kamera: 3Chip oder höher
* Stativ
* einfache Schnittsoftware
* Internetzugang für Upload

Genauer Ablauf:

* Registrierung in einem Netzwerk
* Download von Shotlist
* Telefonische Terminvereinbarung mit Betrieb und Besprechung der Shotlist (Räume, Statisten, etc)
* Hinfahrt
* Dreh nach Shotlist Max 1 Stunde.
* Schnitt: Nur Video (Kein Audio)
* Export als Flash Video
* Upload auf Server
* Warten bis Postpro fertig ist
* Download von fertigem Audio File
* Anlegen von Ton.
* Upload von fertigem Film

Wird das Versprechen von einer Stunde denn so einzuhalten sein? Ich hab etwa 10 bis 20 Einstellungen in den Beispielfilmen gezählt, da muss man dann schon zügig und erfahren vorgehen, wenn man die in einer Stunde professionell einfangen will. Kriegen die Studis Ärger, wenn sie länger brauchen? Was ist mit der Zeit die man braucht, um daraus die 10-15 Minuten brauchbares Material zu identifizieren? Haben die Leute beim Herold wiederum genügend Mitarbeiter, um 2000 Shotlists zu schreiben oder wo sollen die herkommen? Und wenn einE StudentIN Hochschul-Equipment verwendet, muss er/sie die 100 Euro für Aufnahme und Schnitt dann mit der FH teilen? Und kriegen die Studierenden Credits? Die Hochschulen?

Hmm. Irgendwie hab ich das Gefühl, hier will einer die Fähigkeiten der Digital Natives für wenig Geld zu seinem Nutzen einsetzen - das wirft einen gewaltigen Fragenkomplex auf rund um das Thema, was Medienarbeit denn noch wert ist wenn die digitale Medienkompetenz in der Bevölkerung immer breiter wird (siehe dazu auch nochmal diese Blogpost von Datenschmutz: Vom Ungleichgewicht medialer Einkommensverhältnisse).

Das auf den ersten Blick einzig Löbliche das mir hier auffällt: Dass die Herold-Leute verstanden haben, dass so ein Film BITTE nicht länger als 30 Sekunden sein darf. Das ist schon mal eine nicht schlechte Erkenntnis.

P.S.: Ach, die Zusatzgeschäfte - wieviel man dann wohl dafür kriegt? Klingt ja hochlukrativ:

Für den Export von mov File oder das Brennen einer DVD für den Betrieb gibt es extra Geld.

EDIT: Nachtragenswert - bei GoTV gibt's laut Twitternews 20 Euro - pro Dreh. Die spinnen alle, die Ausbeuter.

Noch bis 10. August kann man Bilder hochladen!

Wie eh schon vielfach in der Blogosphäre und in den Kommentaren auf derstandard.at diagnostiziert: Die Ergebnisse können sich sehen lassen und sind um einiges frischer als das, was von den Agenturen üblicherweise so kommt.

Mein persönlicher Favourite ist gerade dies hier (leider kann man bei den auf Flickr hochgeladenen Bildern nur noch raten, woher sie kamen, diese Datei hieß smime - Michael Schuster?)

Cross-pollination and crowdsourcing, all wrapped up in one place for global problem solving, I love it! The world has never been smaller . . .

"Edopter is social trendcasting, combining user insight and worldwide buzz to tap into the next big thing. Users create and follow trends, share and discuss them - then watch as they spread across the world. The site provides a social interaction point around trends in people, places, things, ideas, fashion, media and the web. Part wiki, part stock market game, users get in on trends with potential and earn points as they gain popularity both online and off"

Social trendcasting website Edopter is attempting to do something no other website has successfully acheived - predicting upcoming trends.  The model is fairly simple.  Edopter allows users to create "trends" based on what they believe will eventually catch on.  Some current trends are obvious such as "Batman: Dark Knight" and others not e.g. "Tap Water".  The user that creates the trend is then faced with the task of writing a "pitch" surrounding why they feel the trend will catch on.  Edopter's system then scans the web searching for content around the trend and returns a measurable level "buzz" back to the user.  From here, users have the capability to post videos, pictures and discussions surrounding a trend.  With more discussion and content comes more users and popularity, thus increasing the value of the trend.  Users must "buy into" each trend using points accumulated from various activities on performed on the website.  Each user starts with 500 points and the earlier you get into a trend the cheaper the buy-in, hence users are encouraged to spot trends as early possible. 

The ultimate goal of Edotopter is to gain access to a specific demographic that has never before been tapped...trendsetters.  These are the early adopters that are always on the lookout for new ideas -the big picture people if you will.  However, I feel there is one major flaw in this system.  From my perspective it seems that most of the trends posted on Edopter are ones that already exist, i.e. "Batman: Dark Knight".  Yes, the movie is tremendously popular and many people are buying into to this trend, but it is in no way anything new.  In fact, unless there is pre-existing internet buzz floating around a current topic, Edopter won't assign a high trend value to the topic following its scan of the web. Personally, I struggle to see how value is created simply from discussion around a movie that has already broken the single weekend box office record or any other topic already being discussed all across the world.   

Hopefully as the site progresses (only in the beta stage now), more users will join and create content for their own "big ideas" rather than the current pre-existing trends, however, I personally would be hesitant to post any of my own "big ideas" until I know it's rock solid and ready for feedback/criticism/praise.  That said, I think this is a cool concept and is worth checking out. 

Thoughts?

-PB

Je n'imaginais pas enchainer un nouveau billet aussi vite, et pourtant, la communauté créative KobOne vient de se voir apparaitre un nouveau sujet qui m'a interpellé. Attention, c'est long. Prêts ?

Alors, qu'est ce qu'on a ?

Après l'annonce de Philippe Starck's School of Design, c'est au tour de la chaine MTV de proposer son émission à la noix prenant pour "acteurs" de son futur succès... les créatifs ! Ben voyons...

Cette émission intitulée "MTV Engine Room" sera une sorte de télé-réalité à concours. Voilà le topo :

« Engine Room » est une nouvelle série télévisée de MTV qui sera diffusée partout dans le monde. Cette série suivra des équipes qui s'affronteront dans l'objectif de gagner 400 000 USD en espèces et des produits HP en créant, entre autres choses, des animations, des sites Web, des courts-métrages et des mix audio.

Pour informations, les "candidatures" sont closes, et Miogui me fait savoir dans mon oreillette que les participants sont composés de deux équipes de 4 pigeons artistes, qui vont taffer comme des malades pendant des plombes pour avoir une once de possibilité de pouvoir caresser l'espoir de gagner 400 000 dollars en espèces et des produits Hewlett-Packard (qui nous gratifie de sa fabuleuse baseline en typo "Jack Skellington", j'aime beaucoup, c'est très... enfin bref :D).

Le règlement

C'est là qu'on rigole un peu (ou pas, c'est selon...)

Je vous met un extrait des choses les plus croustillantes qu'on y trouve. Prenez votre respiration, vous allez devoir faire un peu de plongée en apnée :

Les participants conviennent : (i) que la Demande puisse être utilisée par les Sponsors en totalité ou en partie à quelques fins que ce soit et sans indemnisation et (ii) accordent au Sponsors le droit et la licence non exclusifs et irrévocables d’exposer, de diffuser, de copier, de reproduire, d’encoder, de compresser, de chiffrer, d’incorporer des données, d’éditer, de rediffuser, de transmettre, d’enregistrer, de représenter publiquement, de créer des œuvres dérivées, de distribuer et de synchroniser dans le temps en rapport avec des éléments visuels la Demande et/ou toute partie ou extrait de celle-ci un nombre illimité de fois, sous quelque forme ou format, présents ou futurs, pour la durée légale des droits concernés et  (c) sur demande des Sponsors, de fournir aux Sponsors la totalité des éléments en couches sous-jacentes de tous les fichiers de programmes utilisés pour créer la Demande.

Vous pouvez respirer ici.

S'en suit tout un tas d'articles sur la légalité, la non-recevabilité des "oeuvres" transmises en rapport avec une quelconque activité sexuelle, politique, violente, etc... pour noyer le poisson et décourager le potentiel candidat pigeon à ne rien lire et à signer à l'aveugle un espèce de contrat qui le prive de tous ces droits ET de filer également gratuitement ses fichiers sources pour qu'on en fasse ce qu'on veut (et accessoirement gagner de l'argent avec).

Vous en voulez encore ? PAS DE PROBLEMES !

10. Modalités générales des Prix :

(a) La valeur commerciale approximative (la « VCA ») de chaque Prix s’élève à 2 000 USD

C'est pas beau ça ? En plus de faire ce qu'ils veulent des "oeuvres" des "candidats", les POTENTIELS vainqueurs (ceux qui n'auront pas gagné le jackpot) qui recevront un prix sera de 2 000 dollars APPROXIMATIVEMENT ! Genre "on est pas sûrs".

C'est pas fini :

Le Vainqueur d’un Prix peut être soumis à l’impôt sur le revenu sur la valeur du Prix. Les Vainqueurs doivent fournir aux Sponsors leur numéro de sécurité sociale à des fins fiscales.

Aaahahahaha ! Alors ça, franchement, je crois qu'on me l'avait jamais faite... "Peut être que tu gagneras, que tu gagnes ou que tu perdes, tu perds tes droits, tu nous file les sources, on en fait ce qu'on veut, mais si tu gagnes, ça sera peut être un cadeau qui vaut peut être 2 000 dollars, et peut être que tu devras payer des impôts dessus. Donne moi ton numéro de sécu au cas où."

MAIS BIEN SÛR ! Vous savez quoi ? J'ose pas imaginer ce que ça sera pour celui qui va gagner les 400 000 USD... Aie !

Continuons, et jetons un oeil à la FAQ :

Q : Dois-je soumettre des échantillons de mes travaux pour être dans la galerie ?
R : Oui, vous devez soumettre au minimum l'un de vos travaux, mais nous vous encourageons à en soumettre davantage.

Voilà. "Vous mettez au moins un travail, mais franchement, si vous pouviez nous donner plus de trucs à exploiter gratos, ça serait super."

Q : Conserverai-je les droits de propriété sur mes travaux après les avoir téléchargés ?
R : Nous posséderons une licence non-exclusive nous autorisant à exposer vos travaux.

Alors soit j'ai mal compris, soit la réponse n'a absolument rien à voir avec la question. Arrêtez moi si je me trompe hein, mais la question est : "est-ce que je conserve les droits de propriété ?" et la réponse est "une licence va nous autoriser à exposer vos travaux".

On est d'accord. Ca répond pas à la question. Oserai-je dire que ça tente de noyer le poisson encore une fois ?

Voilà voilà. Je crois que ça en valait la peine. Il fallait que je décortique ça absolument pour vous faire voir l'énormité de la chose.

No, not a typo.  Cquestrate is the new and innovative open source approach to tackling Climate Change using an idea developed by Dr George Manos and Tim Kruger

... and a very simple-sounding idea it is too:

First, you heat limestone to a very high temperature, until it breaks down into lime and carbon dioxide.

• Then you put the lime into the sea, where it reacts with carbon dioxide dissolved in the seawater.
• The important point is that when you put lime into seawater it absorbs almost twice as much carbon dioxide as is produced by the breaking down of the limestone in the first place.

This process then apparently has the effect of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Aha - yes. Well, I have absolutely no idea about this idea - they could actually be writing anything up on the webpage and I'd believe them so am feeling somewhat useless right now as a contributor to the development of a solution to climate change... Oh, but hang on a minute, (smirk smirk) why has nobody thought of this before - "if its that easy..."

... well, the site explanation actually then continues onward by answering the very question about to drop from my smug yet woefully uneducated lips :

One of the questions I often get asked is: if this is so simple why hasn’t it been done before? The idea has been around for a number of years. It was first suggested by Haroon Kheshgi in 1995, but it was considered uneconomic as the process uses a large amount of energy. What we are interested in doing is using stranded energy to drive the process.

Aha- well, that explains it. Its all down to stranded energy.

Well, I think it sounds like a wonderful idea - a bit of open sourcey, crowdsourcey goodness... if only I knew more about stranded energy and limestone.... hm.

Thank goodness for scientists! Please forward on this post to people who know what stranded energy is!

Lu sur le blog de Peter Gabor, le concept du Vélib s'exporte à Montréal, et pour l'occasion, la métropole du Québec organise un concours pour trouver le nom du concept.

Une fois de plus, la démarche met en doute la légitimité de ce genre de concours. Le premier prix décrit comme "valable à vie" n'est en fait que de 20 ans et la totalité des valeurs de chaque prix atteint la minuscule somme de 7000$ canadiens. L'annonceur se déleste donc d'un investissement réel et professionnel pour trouver sa marque.

Extrait du règlement de ce concours :

En participant à ce concours, chaque personne inscrite cède et transfert à l'Organisateur, de façon irrévocable et perpétuelle, tous les droits, titres et intérêts universels des suggestions de noms soumises ainsi que toute propriété intellectuelle ainsi créée et découlant de l'inscription. La propriété de l'inscription de même que la propriété intellectuelle sont entièrement dévolues à l'Organisateur. Tout droit moral doit être cédé par la personne participante à l'Organisateur.

L'effet du perverted crowdsourcing, soit "utiliser le crowdsourcing à des fins commerciales au profit d'une seule entité"

Je ne sais pas quelle est la législation en vigueur au Québec, mais en France, le droit moral est inaliénable et imprescriptible, il ne peut être cédé. Si c'est également le cas au Québec (merci de me renseigner :) ), je vous laisse faire votre jugement sur ce point.

Espérons que la création de son identité visuelle ne se fera pas de la même manière.

Contact:

     Press Contact:
     C Adam Agranoff
     VOIS Inc.
     Email Us Here: Email Contact
     Phone: 561-998-3882 x103
     Website: http://www.Vois.com

You'd be a fool not to enter these - and I pity the fool!

Capulet: PutPlace - "Pull a Face"

PutPlace asks you to show your best "data disaster loss" face. Basically, the horror, the agony etc. of knowing you've lost your work/files...

I've entered - though I must admit many of my outtake pictures look more like "I need Metamucil badly!" than "I lost all my files!"

Memelab's: Fan Trust - "I Know What You Did This Summer"

Memelabs wants you to show how your favorite TV characters are spending the summer/hiatus. Great idea! Perhaps someone will imagine a cure to the disease that makes women become contestants on the Bachelor...

I'd enter this one too, but as my Mr. T reference in this post demonstrates, it has been a mighty long time since I watched TV.

I still wonder what happened to Night Court...

The basics go something like this - first, one must become a member for $50/year - from there it is possible to submit logo ideas, vote on certain business decisions, and win rewards and cash based on what you have done. It's certainly an interesting and brilliant business concept, and will prove to be a very interesting experiment in business management, marketing, and design.

With all "co-founders" having an equal share in the business by submitting the $50 fee, they almost become de facto "shareholders." By allowing the customers to have an extremely influential effect on the everyday business decisions, this becomes an easy way to get consumers to evangelize the brand - they are actually making the decisions and have a vested interest in the Company's success.

If successful, this model could potentially lead the way for other small start-ups to take similar paths by ceeding some amount of control, creative or otherwise, to the masses.

-Mike

What Should I Read Next?

You enter some books you like and it recommends other books you might enjoy (or you can see other people's reading lists that have a few favorite matches to see if there is anything that may be of interest).

For what it's worth, this tool actually recommended a book I had read and enjoyed, so that's something. And it came up with another than someone else had recommended I read. But, so far, the books suggested seem a bit too technical for me. While I have been enjoying books on behavioral economics, it has mainly been due to their informal tone and wonderful writing style. So, What Should I Read Next, thanks for assuming I have the attention span for technical or theoretical business books. I don't.

(Anyone know of other similar tools?)

But here's something cool - the site then provides a link where you can swap old books/movies. Bingo!

chanceXchange

I'm just inputting the books I have now, but am very intrigued by the site. It appears to work like this: when someone asks for a book you have, you send it to them and receive a point for the transaction. Then you use that point to get a book (possibly from another user!)

Now, I think this would work even better with people you know. So here's my request from Vancouverites - enter the books you want to exchange at chanceXchange and save your local peeps the postage costs of sending a hardcover clear across our expansive country...

The first is what I'd call the "million monkeys" strategy.  Quite simply, this is the appeal to the crowd for the one or few with a commodity —be it information or material– that you need. "With a group this large, I'm bound to find what I need!"  Greater size and diversity offers a bigger box to sift through, but ultimately it is a few individuals that matter, rather than the crowd itself. 

The million monkey strategy is common online today.  Skill auction sites, such as 99Designs, iStockPhoto, and Yahoo! Answers, reward the best provider of solution to a problem while others watch from the sidelines.  Even though the Internet does not provide anything newly achievable, in that the right connection at the right time does not necessitate a gradiose group, the amount of minds online have greatly increased the potential of achieving that ideal connection.

Yet consider the example of 99 Designs, where people offer bounties for their design needs, and then choose the best submission as the winner of the challenge and recipient of the payment.  A few hundred dollars for a job may seem common for an entry-level designer, but that seems much smaller when one considers the discarded man-hours of the unpaid submitters.  Spec ('speculative') work is frowned upon by professionals because of its devaluative nature, and this concern can be seen to parallel much million-monkey crowdsourcing: it skins the cow for the leather but leaves the meat to rot.

More exciting is truly collaboratively crowdsourcing, because it represents possibilities for collective creation and problem-solving that have never been seen before.  In the purest form, such crowdsourcing allows thousands to each contribute a small part towards a bigger picture (recall the metaphor of Ten Thousands Cents).  Oftentimes, such crowdsourcing overcomes traditional organization dilemmas, such as costs and management.  For example, to categorize images en masse, as is done both actively with the ESP Game and incidentally with Flickr tagging, could not possibly be done at any reasonable rate of return prior to the arrival of the Internet.

As modern communication technology encourages crowds to grow larger while more streamlined, what new problems will they come to solve?  My communications education has pinned groups as collectively blunt, but now it seems that this is a result of primitive communication techniques; online, the "individual" is much more a part of the whole.  If we continue to repurpose individual minds in new combinations, the results will be something not often characteristic of society: fresh.

As both the million monkey and truly collaborative approaches require the same source—a crowd— projects need not be bound to simply one approach, nor are they.  For example, the ever-popular Threadless has a million monkeys system for t-shirt submissions, while an generally democratic system of voting (mixed with some managerial liberties).  If there is a community with one goal it can be re-purposed for another.  And thus we arrive at a topic for another day: the reworking of existing communities.

Bij Crowdsourcing worden klanten gebruikt om mee te denken over innovaties, productverbetering en oplossingen. Dit is ontstaan uit het open source denken in de softwarewereld. Vele handen maken licht werk en het geheel is meer dan de som der delen!

Bedrijven als Dell, IBM en Starbucks doen al aan Crowdsourcing door de inzet van een internetplatform.

Ik geloofde altijd heilig in de kracht van Crowdsourcing, maar door het lezen van een artikel in het blad Velocity (magazine van luchtvaartmaatschappij VLM) zette mij flink aan het denken. Zo wordt in dit artikel de bekende uitspraak uit 1989 van Steve Jobs (de baas van Apple) geciteerd:

'It sounds logical to ask customers what they want and then give it to them. But they rarely wind up getting what they really want that way...'

Apple heeft de afgelopen jaren met deze gedachtegang toch vrij redelijke resultaten kunnen bereiken... :)

Na wat denken, kwam ik tot de volgende conclusie:

• Crowdsourcing is een ideale manier om problemen van consumenten te identificeren en op een juiste manier te verhelpen.

Maar,

• Voor het bieden van innovatieve producten en diensten die het leven van de klant gemakkelijker maken maar niet direct inspringen op een probleem (de zogenaamde extra's) is Crowdsourcing veel lastiger toe te passen. De creatieve excellentie en de grote expertise van het bedrijf op het gebied van de (technische) mogelijkheden zijn voor deze producten en diensten van groot belang.
  Om Crowdsourcing in dit geval succesvol toe te passen is, denk ik, de tweeweg interactie ongelofelijk belangrijk. Dit houdt meer in dan alleen reageren op ideeën. De interactie moet vanuit het bedrijf meer proactief zijn (kom zelf met ideeën) en daarnaast gecombineerd worden met bijvoorbeeld prototypes om het creatieve denkproces van de klant te stimuleren.

Dus bedrijven, niet lui in je stoel zitten en wachten op ideeën of oplossingen van de klant, maar proactief deelnemen aan het Crowdsourcing proces.

Ein kurzer Auszug aus der Pressemeldung:

Los Angeles - Dutch media tycoon John de Mol's Talpa Media Group on Monday announced the launch of TalpaCreative.com, a site where TV fans can create and sell original non-scripted TV show ideas. The best ideas will be developed by del Mol and his team and may be produced and distributed internationally by Talpa Media Group and Endemol, whose previous productions include "Big Brother," "Fear Factor" and "Deal or No Deal."

Das Promo-Video ist erkennbar nicht von Zuschauern/Usern produziert - und wer will wirklich "America's Next Condominium Poolboy" sehen? Den Idee-Entwicklungsprozess stellen sich TalpaCreative wie folgt vor:

Per Online-Antrag kann man dem "Team" (a.k.a der Community) beitreten, die dort verfügbaren Trends & Resources nutzen, Ideen einreichen oder an anderen Ideen mitarbeiten. Außerdem soll man dauerhaft ein aktives Mitglied bleiben, da monatlich 500 Dollar an das "aktivste und kreativste" Mitglied vergeben werden. Hoffe sie haben Glück und das korreliert miteinander! Wird die eigene Idee verwendet, erhält man einen nicht genauer definierten Betrag als Belohnung:

If we option your show idea, you will receive an initial fee and a percentage ownership of the format. The exact amounts will be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on several variables, which may include:

* How well the format is developed (a one-liner, one-pager, or more?),
* The amount of investment that is required to sell the format,
* The format’s potential for international distribution, and
* Format specifics, such as the number of episodes.

Und dabei weden Endemol dann doch hoffentlich fair und ehrlich sein, denn klagen ist laut Terms of Services bereits ausgeschlossen:

Except as otherwise provided in this Agreement, I hereby release you of and from any and all claims, demands and liabilities or every kind whatsoever, known or unknown, that may arise in relation to the Material or by reason of any claim now or hereafter made by me that you have used or appropriated the Material, except for fraud or willful injury on your part.

Ich hab meine Bewerbung mal losgeschickt: "I'm a film and television studies graduate and anticipated Big Brother before it was even conceived at Endemol."

Fundstelle.

Amazon's captured the essential concept on a much larger scale. Their service, providing ways for programs and websites to request human intervention for tasks where humans are simply better equipped to provide answers. These include things like image recognition and language transcription, where computers lack the nuance to do a high-quality job.

One of the many unique applications I've seen is a map company that has turk workers draw a line on a small satellite photo to identify exactly where the road lies. Their maps are tremendously accurate and they can make rapid updates thanks to this simple human intervention. Another service uses people to transcribe podcasts. They've even set up a second batch of tasks, where workers evaluate the accuracy of the transcriptions. In this way they can to ensure overall quality service to their customer with limited need for oversight. Basically, the oversight is already built into the process.

Tasks are known as "HITs," which stands for "Human Intelligence Tasks." Most HITs are quick and simple; pay is generally a few cents each. A few run $1 or more, but not many. Keep in mind this level of wage is more likely to draw third-world workers than domestic.

The absolute most creative use of Mechanical Turk: The Sheep Market, an interactive online art experiment. Hear more directly from artist Aaron Koblin:

Now that you are inspired with a dose of out-of-the-box creativity, what simple, repetitive tasks are required in your business? Do you need your own mechanical turk? Here are a few examples to get you started:

• Online research (trivia, competitors, information-gathering)
• Writing (reviews, website updates, articles, blog comments)
• Photo evaluation (identification, selection, matching)

Find all the details on Amazon's Mechanical Turk Welcome page.

If you’re reading this blog you’ve probably been following Spiceworks for a while. You know what we do: build simple, yet powerful, network management software. You know who we do it for: IT Pros in small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). And most of all – you know what we charge for it: nothing, it’s free! What you may not know is why.

In my last post I talked about why we chose the SMB market. Their unique needs, how different they are from the enterprise, and what that meant for the management software we built. It drove us to build what our users often refer to as “the iTunes of IT”. However, that’s just half the story. The more time we spent with these SMB IT Pros, the more it became clear that tools were only part of the problem. Their biggest challenge had nothing to do with software; it had to do with information. You see the typical IT Pro in small businesses works alone. It’s just him. No big “IT department” to lean on. No experts or specialists to learn from. So when he has a problem he’s never seen before, or he’s wondering how to setup an Exchange Server, or which firewall will work best in his environment -- he’s on his own.

When we started the company our goal was to simplify the IT Pro’s day. Give them software that was simple, powerful, yet easy-to-use. It should leverage technology to “do things for them”, to ultimately make their job easier. Now it was clear -- if we didn’t solve the information problem we wouldn’t make a dent in this goal. Just simplifying the software wouldn’t be enough. We needed to simplify how they find the information they need to do their job. From break fix advice, to best practices on how to run their network, to research on the products and services they need. Spiceworks needed to be about simplifying everything IT.

We knew we couldn’t solve this in the traditional way. The last thing the world needs is yet another IT / tech website. There plenty of good ones out there already from Experts Exchange to IT Toolbox. Just having the information available isn’t enough. You need the right information at the right time. And by “the right information” we mean what’s relevant to the IT Pro’s specific environment. What works for a 100 person law firm running Dell’s might not work for a 10 person non-profit using HP’s. By “the right time” we mean when they need it, right in the context of their daily workflow. If they’re working on inventory, show them products that work well with what they’ve got. If they’re debugging their exchange server, show them what other users have done in similar situations. And do it all right in the flow of the application. No searching Google for what you need, it would just come to you!

Now that’s a fairly grand vision, one that could take us years to deliver. But we figured what the hell -- if you’re going to dream, dream big. It’s not often in life you get a chance to do something that transforms an industry so why not go for it! After all, life is short and you’ve got to have some reason to get up in the morning.

So how are we doing? We’re well down the path to our goal. We started day one by crowdsourcing the product features in Spiceworks itself. We added community Q&A filtered by what’s in your network. Next came product & service ratings and reviews tied directly to inventory assets. And in our new 3.0 release we’ve added custom reports created and shared by the community.

This is just the beginning. You’ll see even more from us in the next couple of months. So stay tuned as we embark on our journey to Simplify Everything IT.

"What if we could find some way of harnessing that cognitive surplus - and providing volunteering/pro-social crowd-sourcing opportunities that commuters could dip into at five-minutes-to-nine, just before they got stuck into their nine-till-five?"

I  love this idea- crowdsourcing commuters.... how could it work...?

If people wanted to participate in the SETI grid or Oxford cancer screensaver idea ...as they certainly did... then maybe there's some mileage in this social idea...

I've often thought in the morning on the dreary train journey into Waterloo that it would sometimes be nice to have a social carriage - where people who fancy a bit of a chat could meet up and talk in the 40 mins or whatever it takes you.  It would work better in the mornings when people haven't woken up enough to be reserved or self-contained... when they're a little sleepy and therefore haven't crawled into their commuting shell so entirely as on the way home when they encase themselves in ipods, books, or the temptingly vacuous freesheets.

There could be rules of conduct to avoid the real weirdos* taking over... I'm imagining a volunteer facilitator might be helpful in keeping the peace...

And of course, another benefit other than general social good would be a constituent audience for volunteering. After all, commuters are some of the most time-pressed people, and therefore one of the hardest-to-reach groups despite being generally  quite affluent and well-connected. They are time poor and disconnected from their surroundings... this needs to change! Its crazy to have those people who are driven, confident and ambitious to be cooped up on trains for 2 or more hours per day just wasting all that lovely social capital... ;)

The initial group leaders or local voluntary groups could set up discussion spaces in the carriage recruiting for (or actually carrying out using wifi/mobiles) different activities local to the train stations passed through...

However, I'm not sure that model would work so well on the tube! It's a bit squashed.

* (For those of you who don't live in London, just to point out that pretty much all strangers here seem to think you are a dangerous lunatic if you talk to them on public transport. I found this out the hard way, but still persevere. Am beginning to wonder if this does now qualify me as an actual weirdo... hm....)

Pete outlines upfront three truths that inform the entire book:

• Businesses no longer hold absolute sway over the decisions and behavior of consumers
• The longer companies refuse to accept the influence of consumer-to-consumer communication a­nd perpetuate old ways of doing business, the more they will alienate and drive away their customers
• To succeed in a world where consumers now control the conversation, and w­here satisfied customers tell three friends, while angry customers tell 3000, companies must achieve credibility on every front.

How do you create authentic messages, maintain credibility, and synthesize the fact that businesses no longer have absolute sway over decisions? By listening to, and acting on conversations that are happening on the web, businesses can accomplish all three. Companies that chose to ignore this important raw conversation will be left in the dust by more progressive firms who capitalize on the opportunities presented to them by simply paying attention to how the online space perceives their brand or company.

The important aspect of this conversation is that it is often "unfiltered." It is not subject to biases that may be present in formal focus groups - it is simply raw perception. If there seems to be a disconnect between what execs believe their message is and what the online space is saying their message is - companies better listen. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for companies that use it to it's advantage), perception is reality.

-Mike

Fox Broadcasting Company, yes the same Fox that brought us classic shows such as the Simpson's, 24, and the Tick (well maybe not the latter), has partnered with crowdsourcing firm Passenger to build an on-line community around Fox shows and to help executives make more informed programming and marketing decisions.  Passenger will help Fox to analyze public response of pilot episodes, plot direction, character ratings throughout the development process.  This is not the first project Passenger has worked on with an entertainment studio.  They played a huge roll in helping LOST big wigs Damon Lindelof and Carton Cuse select which episodes would be submitted to Emmy voters.  Fox is hoping that Passenger can begin by helping to collect feedback on their upcoming fall schedule. 

Some studios have been reluctant to take the crowdsourcing route because of the constant monitoring of feedback required.  Lately however, many have been turning a corner so-to-speak, and recognizing that a focus group here in and there is simply not enough to gauge the public opinion.  Who knows, maybe with a little luck they'll listen to this blogger's voice and bring Elisha Cuthbert back on 24. 

-Paul B.