Wednesday, October 25, 2006
First Google now Amazon; attacked from all sides
This is just a quick follow up to my FRBR post. Amazon it appears is leveraging their Mechanical Turk to steal more then just the jobs of catalogers. Their new service NowNow is essentually a reference question service the works on mobile devices such as cell phones and blackbarries. Unlike Google that uses trained and vetted reference librarians (or equivalent) or Yahoo that allows anyone, NowNow farms the questions out to Mechanical Turk. I'm not sure what the quality will be like as anyone can sign up to work for mechanical Turk. According to the FAQ a response rating system will regulate the system to some degree. I'm not sure what the pay structure is but it might be a quick way for an impoverished library student to earn a few bucks. I'm thinking that if described creatively it might also look interesting on a resume, particularly to some one not in the know.
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CastingWords is another Mechanical Turk service of interest. A fair amount has been written about it, so it might provide some food for thought. I've used it with mixed results, but the service definitely proved interesting enough that I'd use it again.
You can find out more at:
http://castingwords.com/
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