An unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online since 2005. Not affiliated with Google.

Send your tips to gostips@gmail.com.

May 10, 2007

Google Image Labeler Is More Exciting

Last year, Google launched a game that pairs you with someone, asks you tag random images and gives you points if one of your tags is identical to one of your partner's tags. Google Image Labeler was inspired by a system developed at Carnegie Mellon University whose purpose was to improve the results of an image search engine.

After 8 months since the application is live, the top contributor has 100,000 matched labels. Google Image Search has more than 200 million images in its index.

Until now, for each match you got 100 points. But many people realized that they could easily win points if they typed generic tags like "man", "people", "photo". To make the game more exciting and to improve the quality of tags, Google decided to change the way you get points. Now you can get anywhere from 50 to 150 depending on how specific your tag is.

"Labels that are more descriptive receive more points than generic labels. For example, for an image of a red corvette, matching on "red car" or "corvette" would receive more points than a match on the label "car". This is because more specific labels are even more helpful in our efforts to improve the quality of image search results, so we wanted to credit players accordingly."

Also the time for a round was increased from 90 seconds to 2 minutes and the thumbnails look bigger (they aren't bigger and your browser does the resizing).

16 comments:

  1. Hello Ionut,

    It appears that your feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoogleOperatingSystem makes Google throw the following error:

    We're sorry...

    ... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

    We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

    We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.

    Please check this :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. How come? That's a feed hosted by FeedBurner.

    Usually that error happens if you use software that automatically queries Google very frequently. Google blocks your IP or asks you to fill a captcha. So it's your problem.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It seems fixed now.

    Why my problem ? :) Feedburner was crawling the feeds.

    ReplyDelete
  4. FeedBurner fetches the feed from BlogSpot. But if Blogger returns an error, it shouldn't update.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've been playing a lot the past week and I've seen a lot of images of:

    Ford Mustangs
    Live Free or Die Hard
    motorcycles

    Why is that?

    ReplyDelete
  6. i think dis is really koo i play t err day haha holla at cha gurl

    ReplyDelete
  7. I tried image labeller just now and will not bother again. The last person I was paired with (nickname: ggm) started directing some abuse my way: 'it's not that hard u asshle' on an image for which I had suggested 'woman' and 'female' (no previous labels for that picture) and for which one of his/her suggestions was 'wana do her' [sic] ...

    ReplyDelete
  8. images are repeated way too often. makes it boring.

    ReplyDelete
  9. i love men and men only i am not bisexual i am gay with me the kid next to me sucks my face

    ReplyDelete
  10. MR said on December 14, 2008 5:38 AM PDT:
    images are repeated way too often. makes it boring.

    only an addict wid no life would say that LOOOL

    ReplyDelete
  11. Too many Yanks which means too many Yank words which means ultimately for Google image users, non-Yank spellers are very limited by their search results.

    ReplyDelete
  12. somebody should put a link in here that goes to the lableler, the others are blocked:(

    ReplyDelete
  13. I get porn-ish images somtimes, don't really like that >__<

    ReplyDelete
  14. It's absolutely soul-draining to play it, but it can be fascinating to see some of the images: there will be some remarkable landscapes and people images, that you can view after the game is over. However, there is enough questionable content that this is definitely NSFW, or for anyone under 18...

    ReplyDelete
  15. That is really cool and interesting for everyone.i like Google updates

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.