Tag: CROWDSOURCING

If you're a mega-dork like this Switched editor, whether a research junkie or just a pompous pedant, from time to time you absolutely love to load up on academic journals (including the Journal of Food Science, October and, obviously, The Lancet). Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that "some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly" that these journals represent, ...

Hey, amateur astronomers, listen to this: A couple of at-home space nuts recently discovered a pulsar with a screensaver that uses idle PC time to process data collected from telescopes. By using Einstein@Home to 'donate' a PC's processors to the pursuit of science, the program harnesses thousands of willing computers, rather than one supercomputer, to analyze data. This helps on-the-clock ...

Crowd-sourcing your dating life as a last means hope of finding that special someone is, well, desperate. But who are we to criticize a chosen path to love? Earlier this week, a 23-year-old New Yorker named Brian became a hit on the Web because he let the Internet pick his partner. Part of his internship at advertising agency BBH required him to "make something, anything famous," his tweet to ...

We're getting a little sick of crowd-sourcing, but 'Life in a Day' -- a new project by Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald -- seems like it could have some promise, if only due to the cinematic weight that the directors bring to the table. Macdonald, who directed 'The Last King of Scotland,' and Scott, who directed sci-fi favorites like 'Blade Runner' and 'Alien,' have partnered with YouTube to ...

Well, the Internet has won. The last exclusive, nigh-impenetrable institution known as the art world has buckled to the social media cloud. The New York Times reported yesterday that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has joined forces with YouTube to create a user-driven biennial of video art, to be exhibited at all four of the Guggenheim's global outposts. The project, called YouTube Play, ...

Share Comments on YouTube videos are rarely interesting, and most certainly would never be mistaken for insightful. In fact, most conversations that take place on the site are about as compelling and informative as watching a room full of four-year olds with Tourette's syndrome (Author's note: Apparently some people found the joke offensive, and it has been cut to avoid further argument) debate ...

The Republican effort to allow its rank and file members to craft the party's platform has officially launched in the form of America Speaking Out, built on top of Microsoft's Town Hall platform. Users can sign up directly with America Speaking Out or use Facebook Connect to log on. Once a member, you're only a few mouse clicks away from wielding influence over what issues and policies will form ...

It's not quite as good as walking on it, but amateur space enthusiasts can now help scientists learn more about the moon by studying detailed, super high-resolution photographs. In fact, the pictures transmitted by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) are so fine and multitudinous that there is simply too much information for scientists to handle. According to NPR, Oxford University ...

NBC's marketing team is either full of geniuses or really, really lazy. The network's new affinity program, called Fan It, asks MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and myNBC users to promote and discuss the network's shows in exchange for NBC merchandise, store discounts, "virtual goods" and early previews of new episodes. We don't really like the term "affinity program," because it's ...

What happens when location-based technology meets fear-based politics? We're not entirely sure, but based on what we've seen from a new app that claims to merge the two, we're not sure we really want to find out, either. Offering the opportunity to "earn tons of cool badges," 'SnapScouts' is a location-based app for Android that encourages users to take photos of people engaging in "suspicious ...

The 2004 and 2008 elections made it abundantly clear that Republicans had a long way to go if they intended to catch up to the Democrats when it comes to politicking 2.0. Obama was thrust into office based largely on his success in leveraging the Web to rally the youth vote and has carried that tech savvy into the White House. In the meantime the GOP has struggled to even pull off simple tasks, ...

As copious amounts of oil continue to hemorrhage from the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico, the hopes of millions now hinge on the deepwater exploits of robots. Desperate for a solution, an overwhelmingly underprepared BP has been preparing a massive 100-ton structure that it hopes can effectively cover and contain the ruptured well 5,000 feet below sea level. Photos have now surfaced of the ...

Crowd-sourced material is really hot right now, from choral productions to YouTube spots for the Grammys, and we have to admit that we're not sure whether we like it or not. Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin and @radical.media have recently launched The Johnny Cash Project, in belated memory of the The Man in Black, who died nearly seven years ago. The lateness of this endeavor notwithstanding, ...

Traditionally, town hall meetings were events in which everyday, normal citizens could informally gather and share opinions or concerns. In the past few years, the town hall ethos has been revived and adapted to a more contemporary political context, much to the electoral benefit of some politicians and much to the horror of others. Now, Microsoft has decided to bring the town hall to the digital ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/03/23/virtual-choir-unites-youtube-songbirds-in-digital-harmony/#continued'; We'll just generalize and say that everyone in the world who saw the YouTube 'We're All Fans' videos, which served to promote the 2010 Grammys, absolutely loved them. (Right?) Well, it's just that old democratizing Internet at it again, transforming those lone individuals who ...