Crowdsourcing improves predictive texting - tech - 25 February 2012 SMARTPHONES may soon get a lot better at finishing your sentences for you - with the help of words and phrases gleaned from crowdsourcing. The software packages in today's phones often struggle with texts and voice commands if a user attempts words or phrases that aren't included in the phone's database. To see if the crowd could help, Keith Vertanen of Montana Tech in Butte and Per Ola Kristensson at the University of St Andrews, UK, called upon workers of the Amazon Mechanical Turk. The plan was to try and improve a predictive system used in Augmented and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices, which help disabled people to communicate by painstakingly typing out words interpreted from their muscle twitches or blinks. The researchers paid 298 Mechanical Turk workers to imagine phrases they might need if they had motor neuron disease or cerebral palsy. Their responses produced nearly 6000 useful phrases. David Weir at the University of Sussex, UK, agrees that the system has potential.
Frédéric Bardeau : « l’hacktivisme doit changer de posture » Frédéric Bardeau s’est fait connaître du grand public après la parution fin 2011 de son bouquin-enquête « Anonymous, peuvent-ils changer le monde ? », co-écrit avec Nicolas Danet. Bardeau est un entrepreneur du web, co-fondateur de l’agence Limite, pure-player spécialisé en communication, mais n’est pas pour autant un « cyber-béat ». Son activité de conseil en stratégie digitale l’oblige à observer le net avec le plus de recul possible : l’évolution du réseau, ses ornières ou ses avancées, ceux qui défendent sa neutralité ou veulent le réguler, les groupes de cyber-activistes qui s’y font connaître, etc. Nous nous sommes rencontrés lors d’une conférence sur la neutralité du net et l’hacktivisme, où votre serviteur, pour Reflets, et Jérémie Zimmerman pour La Quadrature du Net étaient eux aussi invités. Nous avons depuis lors gardé contact. En cinq questions-réponses, Bardeau donne son analyse sur ces sujets. Frédéric Bardeau : C’est une très bonne chose sur le fond.
Top 10 Kitchen Tricks That Speed Up Cooking So you’ve started beefing up your cooking skills, but the process is still a little tedious. Here are 10 surprising kitchen techniques that will save you a bunch of time — not to mention wow your friends. Please enable JavaScript to watch this video. 10. If you don’t love pomegranates, it’s either because you’ve never had one or you hate how much work they take to deseed. 9. Peeling a hard boiled egg is a pain in the butt, but there’s a much easier way to get to the goods inside: just cut it in half and spoon it out of the shell. 8. Most 12 packs of soft drink are designed to sit in your fridge, but who needs an entire box sitting in there? 7. Ladling pancake batter into a pan is a recipe for a mess. 6. If you don’t like eating apples whole (they can, after all, get a little messy that way), but don’t always have a knife around, you can actually break them in half with your bare hands. 5. 4. If you have a particularly garlic-heavy recipe to make (so brave!) 3. 2. 1.
ADULLACT - Mutualisation de logiciels libres pour institutionnels Hacktivisme : les voies du pouvoir ne sont plus impénétrables Le vrombissement incessant des ordinateurs dissipe les nuées âpres des gaz lacrymogènes, le clapotis furieux des claviers atténue le fracas des cocktails Molotov, et la révolte larvée d’esprits embrumés par l’opacité du pouvoir se présente à nouveau, l’œil résolu, le poing fermé, la transparence à la boutonnière. L’envie d’en découdre ne cache plus rien d’autre que le besoin de conquérir un savoir trop longtemps dissimulé. Internet a fait d’une révolte une révolution, et la liberté est à portée de clavier. L'un des premiers serveurs de l'infrastructure de Telecomix. Un processeur SPARC tournant sous Debian Lenny. source: Wikimedia commons Le hacker répond à cette question par un savoir technique avancé de la programmation informatique qu’il tâche de mettre en pratique sans suivre les règles établies. Les liens entre savoir et pouvoir Le philosophe Francis Bacon, dans ses Meditationes Sacrae, considéra le lien entre le savoir et le pouvoir en indiquant que « le savoir est pouvoir ».
Solve Puzzles for Science | Foldit Detroit redémarre en mode DIY Le webdocumentaire "Detroit, je t'aime" raconte le quotidien des habitants d'une grande ville à l'abandon. Entre créativité, échanges de ressources et de savoirs, potagers urbains, DIY et récupération de matériaux, Detroit vit un renouveau qui préfigure peut-être la société de demain. Detroit n’est pas la ville des rêves, c’est la ville des réalités. – Grace Lee Boggs, 96 ans, activiste et habitante de Detroit Imagination Station (à droite) fait face à la Michigan Central Station (à gauche), géante gare abandonnée, symbole du déclin de Détroit. Déclarée plusieurs fois en faillite depuis 2011, Detroit est une ville à l’abandon, vidée de sa population, de la plupart de ses commerces et entreprises. Dans leur webdocumentaire Detroit Je T’aime, les journalistes françaises Nora Mandray et Hélène Bienvenu, s’intéressent aux bouleversements du monde post-industriel et post-communiste. Comment est construit votre webdocumentaire ? Sarah a mené le premier atelier mécano de Fender Bender. Au Mt.
Cairns Blog: Crowdsourcing Governance [Video intro ends at 52 seconds; Intro by Dr. Gref ends at 2'18; Speech ends at 11'15; then Q&A] For Prime Minister Putin's presentation, click here. Crowdsourcing Governance We’ve heard today that as individuals we are smarter collaborating together than working alone. Collaboration makes businesses more successful. Challenges To do so, we have three challenges we must first overcome: 1. 2. 3. Solutions I would argue that collaboration is more important for government than for business in these very tough economic times, because it enables government to deliver better services for less money and more democratically. First, crowdsourcing is a serious solution to serious problems. 1. 2. 3. Second, designed right, these are not experimental projects. Previously, I had some experience creating a platform called Peer to Patent, in which we connected volunteer scientists and technologists to the national patent offices. Closing This is not about the technology. It’s about asking questions.
Geeks are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties A decade-plus of anthropological fieldwork among hackers and like-minded geeks has led me to the firm conviction that these people are building one of the most vibrant civil liberties movements we’ve ever seen. It is a culture committed to freeing information, insisting on privacy, and fighting censorship, which in turn propels wide-ranging political activity. In the last year alone, hackers have been behind some of the most powerful political currents out there. Before I elaborate, a brief word on the term “hacker” is probably in order. Even among hackers, it provokes debate. For instance, on the technical front, a hacker might program, administer a network, or tinker with hardware. Despite their differences, there are certain websites and conferences that bring the various hacker clans together. Take, for instance, the reaction to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a far-reaching copyright bill meant to curtail piracy online.
Solver Develops Solution to Help Clean Up Remaining Oil From the 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster Boston, MA and Cordova, AK - November 7, 2007 - InnoCentive, the leader in prize-based Open Innovation sourcing, is helping to make a positive impact on Environmental Conservation by working with the Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI) and other conservation groups. OSRI has posted 3 Challenges on the InnoCentive website, all dealing with oil spill recovery issues. The first of these challenges was solved last week by an oil industry outsider who used his expertise in the concrete industry to come up with the winning solution. John Davis, an InnoCentive Solver from the Central United States, was awarded $20,000 for his creative solution. This first OSRI Challenge required a method for separating oil from water on oil recovery barges after the oil and water had frozen to a viscous mass. InnoCentive is changing the face of R&D for corporations, government agencies, and not-for-profits by employing their prize-based method to engage innovators in many industries from around the world.
The big list of 100 tools, tips and tricks to work more efficiently online 7.2K Flares Filament.io 7.2K Flares × What does it take to be productive? It’s a question I often ask myself and to be honest I don’t have a great answer for it yet. That’s why I’m working on a solid running routine and on a set wake-up time and sleep time. One other realization I had is that, as I now spend so much of my day working online, there are a heap of new apps being created all the time to help us all become more productive. That’s why I thought of compiling a full list of 100 tools, tips and tricks for you to reflect a bit on your own productivity. Of course, a sure fire way to fail might be to try and use all 100, which Joel pointed out to me when we discussed this post! 10 awesome music sites to get into your zone When Leo recently wrote about Multitasking, one of the most interesting aspects was that music doesn’t actually contribute to us being distracted when we work. “In the case of music, it’s a little different. 1. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 10. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 1.
The central platform for crowdsourcing US Government challenges, contests, competitions and open innovation prizes | Challenge.gov