Gordaen's Blog

Google Image Labeler is a brilliant, simple, and addictive answer to a common problem: identifying images. If you’re like me, you’ve often found image searches less than helpful. Unfortunately, without insanely sophisticated software, the only easy way to recognize images is by human interpretation. Since it is far too expensive to try to pay people to label images all day, that answer has not been the best.

Instead of paying with money, Google created a game out of labeling images in which you are paired with a random partner and you get to try to match images as quickly as possible. The two of you are given two minutes to try to find common keywords. When the two of you match on a keyword, you get a new image. You can also pass if either of you are stumped (it shows the number of guesses the other person has attempted, but you don’t get to see what words s/he tried until after the two minutes). It’s simple. It’s fun. It’s addictive!