via John Battelle’s Searchblog

Amazon is testing a web service API called Mechanical Turk, which solves the problem of trying to code for tasks which are too difficult or complicated by outsourcing them to humans. Somewhat of a long-tail approach to simple tasks.

For software developers, the Amazon Mechanical Turk web service solves the problem of building applications that until now have not worked well because they lack human intelligence. Humans are much more effective than computers at solving some types of problems, like finding specific objects in pictures, evaluating beauty, or translating text. The idea of the Amazon Mechanical Turk web service is to give developers a programmable interface to a network of humans to solve these kinds of problems and incorporate this human intelligence into their applications.

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Oftentimes people do not move forward with certain projects because the cost to establish a network of skilled people to do the work outweighs the value of completing it. By turning the fixed costs into variable costs that scale with their needs, the Amazon Mechanical Turk web service eliminates this barrier and allows projects to be completed that before were not economical.
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Some of the tasks currently in the marketplace benefit Amazon’s search subsidiary A9.com. Amazon Mechanical Turk is being used to increase the quality of A9’s BlockView pictures that show users street-level pictures of businesses. These HITs ask people to select from several photographs the one that best presents the front of a business. Thousands of these HITs are still listed on the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site.

thanks Biewald