We're Going to Cover That In Phase 2

It is really hard to keep up with Web 2.0. Amazon for instance has been rolling out tons of web services and lots of smart people are figuring out ways to use them. I would love to think of something super cool that will allow me to create a company that Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft or AOL is forced to buy due to its amazing coolness. I am definitely trying though so far, no eureka moments.
One service that I found especially cool is called Amazon Mechanical Turk. It provides a web services API for computers to integrate “artificial, artificial intelligence” directly into their processing by making requests of humans.” Basically, people complete simple tasks that people do better than computers and get paid for their effort. For instance, to help the rollout of the A9 local search engine, you might identify stores in photos, something humans are great at but computers kind of suck at. The name was taken after Wolfgang von Kempelen’s mechanical chess-playing automaton. Too bad the pay is literally pennies right now. I’ll be keeping tabs on it to see how it evolves…