I’ve posted some photos I took at the Refresh Dallas meeting.

Great turnout - around 50-60 people!

Take a look and add a note or a comment if you see yourself!

Amazon has a new service called Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The Turk is a reference to a “mechanical chess-playing automaton” from 1769:

In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen’s “Turk” was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet’s doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the mechanical Turk: a chess master cleverly concealed inside.

There is a great book I read about The Turk awhile ago called (what else) “The Turk“.

To break down what Amazon’s new service is:

• Lets say you had 10,000 photographs and you needed only photographs with dogs
• There is no computer that can do this reliability - so you need real people
• You then write a program that displays the images and says “Is there a dog in this image” “Yes or No”
• Using the Amazon Turk API you then can release the program on the web and pay people .05 per image
• Amazon handles all the backend stuff and you get reliable results - real people looking at each image, telling you which images have dogs (and getting a small compensation for their trouble)

Very interesting, something to keep your eye on…

Getting ready to head on over for the Refresh Dallas meeting.

We’re finishing up printing, getting the equipment ready - and leaving Bright Corner shortly.

Hopefully we’ll have a pod cast, pics and more up tomorrow.

I came across this when signing up for a Remember the Milk account:

Things I like:

• Short and sweet.
• Check boxes that appear when you’ve filled out the field correctly.
• The “username” is available message.
• The “Which Looks Right” date for international localization.

It’s also a great to-do application, i’ve been using it for about three weeks now and so far it’s performed great! - now if I can just get everyone in the office to start using it…

Yes, the internet needed another blog. I’ve decided to move some of my web properties (like they have any value) around and I think I’m about complete. The cssreboot gave me the kick-in-the-pants to get this site up, along with my photoblog metrolifestyle.

I’ll be tweaking this site over the next couple of weeks, but I’ve found a base I like - and will start here.

If you do not know who I am (and why would you) I write for a couple of sites, have a few photography websites and am a designer for Bright Corner during the day. You can learn more about me on my use-to-be-blog-now-homebase site jeremyjohnsononline.

Looking to the future I will be posting about design, technology, internet this-and-that - I currently write about photography on ilikecameras and pixelimpact.

At Bright Corner I’m a Designer among other things, you can view some of my work on my portfolio site digitalbauhas. My hobby is photography and on the side I’m a creative thinker.

Hope you will stay and chat!