Using CAPTCHA to Digitize Books

Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, has come up with an idea to aid in the digitization process of books.  Modifying a commonly used Web security system called CAPTCHA (you type a sequence of letters or numbers that appear on the screen in a distorted or garbled image) users will now see two words instead of one.  One will be the real security word. The other is an image from a digitization project that the computer software was unable to identify.  "Each time you type one of these, your brain is doing something amazing," von Ahn says. "Your brain is performing a task that, despite 50 years of research in computer science, we cannot yet get computers to do."  Check out the rest of the story on NPR’s All Things Considered.  [RJ]