ImageLabeler

There's been some attention given to Google's Image Labeler recently. It's a "game" where you and an anonymous partner somewhere in the world are each shown an image and you need to come up with possible tags for the image. If you match, you get points and move on to the next image. Each "game" lasts for a minute and a half.

It's good and bad. It can be mildly addictive; there's a certain attraction in coming up with as many words as possible to describe an image. The bad: either the infrastructure can't handle the load or people are just stupid, because I can't count the number of times that I've been typing away, thinking of every word I can...and the partner's word count stops at 3. It's as if there are people out there who are saying "You will match one of these three words, period. I can't be bothered."

Overall, it's frustrating even as it's addicting. Give it a try, but don't expect to remain calm.