Amidst the IFA meetings that have been happening since last week, Google has launched a new app called the Crowdsource.
The Crowdsource app aims to collect and pile up all the cumulative wisdom from the users so that Google can improve its services. It seems like Google needs all the brainpower and the user’s free time to make a collaborative contribution to improving its applicability. This Crowdsource app can be used for Translations, Handwriting recognition, maps etc.
What is Crowdsource all about
Crowdsource has been created with the aim of bringing a lot of user feedback together into its services. The design and theorems which Google employs for certain tasks and principles, for example, like image identification, is not very sophisticated and practical like that of the human mind. The users have plenty of opportunities to make such products from Google much better.
How Crowdsource actually works
Once Crowdsource is installed, it asks the users to select the languages which they are fluent with. The app then displays five different panels that are related to the Google tools, for which the user can contribute to. These five Google tools are the Image transcription, Handwriting recognition, Translation, Translation Validation and Map translation validation. If the users are fluent in more than one language, they can give feedback in the multiple languages known to them and will help in making Crowdsource even better. The more, the better!
When the services are chosen to collaborate with, each service asks the user to give feedback and help in different ways. For example, in transcription of images, the user must type in the correct name that is found in the image. For handwriting recognition, the user must transcribe the text that is displayed on the screen. It is usually a cake-walk (for humans) to perform these tasks, but occasionally it does become tricky. Here is where the Google’s computer algorithms would have struggled.
For the translation validation, the user defines whether the translation of a certain word or expression is most accurate or if it is completely wrong. Translation collaboration is way just simpler. The users just need to translate certain phrases in the languages that they are fluent in. However, the user needs to be fluent in more than one language to provide any sort of assistance here.
Why the users should try Crowdsource
The main aim of this app is to fill in and cover the loopholes that have been out by Google’s algorithms, which undoubtedly are very clever theorems indeed. It is the wisdom of the “crowds” which will have an effect to increase the accuracy and make the services even better.
The only benefit the users might get from using this app is from the improvements they might list out to make the Google services a better place and which in the long run will be taken into action by the company. But in the short term, it might just be a “feel good” activity, as there are no immediate accolades unlike the Google Opinion Rewards, which had a financial incentive for users for their feedback.
It seems a little imprecise to gauge the positive response to this app since the users who usually want everything for free might not respond to this kind of a service-based app for a long time. So, even rating the app when the results are so ambiguous seems a little unclear. As of now, the app has managed to secure an average of 4.3-star rating and a download rate of less than 50 thousand. However, it will be very interesting to the rate of adoption of this app usage.
The kind nature of the users is what Google’s Crowdsource app is banking on.