Visit Your Local PBS Station PBS Home PBS Home Programs A-Z TV Schedules Support PBS Shop PBS Search PBS

Engage Blog

Exploring new connections between people, culture and technology

All Your Indecipherable Letters Are Belong To Us

Computer scientist Luis von Ahn, creator of CAPTCHA (the distorted letters you type for security reasons to leave a comment on a blog or fill out a web form) has developed a new use for CAPTCHA: digitizing books. With the new CAPTCHA, called reCAPTCHA, users distinguish letters optical character recognition (OCR) software cannot; below, von Ahn tells host Ziya Tong how solving reCAPTCHAs can be "something good for humanity" in this Wired Science clip:


See reCAPTCHA in action and help digitize books from the Internet Archive by visiting the reCAPTCHA site and embedding it on your own site.

What do you think of reCAPTCHA? What other good deeds for humanity could be accomplished with CAPTCHAs?

jakers

What happen to Jakers? My husband and I throught that was one of the cutest shows. Being a daycare teacher for over twenty years this was a great show to teach respect and fun story telling.Please bring it back. George is great to but not so much it's on all the time you could slip JAKERS in some where
Tanks
Mr&Mrs Jesson

Post new comment

We welcome your comments, and hope to host energetic, civil discussions. As you post, please keep the following in mind:
  • Keep your comments focused on the topic at hand.
  • Don't use profanity, personal attacks or hate speech.
  • Don't promote a business or raise money.
  • When all else fails, think "Golden Rule": Treat others the way you'd like to be treated yourself.
We reserve the right to remove posts that don't follow these guidelines. By submitting comments, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which include more details.
Your email address is for internal purposes only and will not be published, shared or sold to other entities