Red Box Video

So I was thinking the other day (I know, I know, dangerous…) and it struck me that Amazon could take the red box video idea and merge it with Mechanical Turk for something really revolutionary. If you live in North America, I’m sure you’re familiar with the red box video service that you can find at McDonald’s, Walmart, etc. They’re all over now. Basically, it’s a vending machine for DVDs.

The idea of kiosks got me thinking, though. What if, instead of a retail machine, it was something entirely different from Amazon – a Mechanical Turk kiosk – a Green Box. Picture this. Worker comes to McDonald’s, answers a few simple questions and gets to choose money or menu. If menu is picked, depending on how many tasks he completed, pictures of food and drink comes up. Maybe 5 tasks for a Big Mac. The details would have to be worked out. Read the full story

Amazon Mechanical Turk is one of the web services provided by Amazon that allows Requesters to use the services of a group of workers from various parts of the world. The Requesters are usually programmers and entrepreneurs who need certain tasks that cannot be performed effectively by computers. Examples of these tasks include the writing of product descriptions, the transcription of voice recordings, and elimination of the duplication of data. This web service is being promoted as a cost-effective alternative to IT services because the Requester only has to pay for results that he uses. There are no contracts, long-term commitments, or up-front expenses. Mechanical Turk is based on the principle of crowdsourcing, which is the act of outsourcing tasks to a group of people who may chose to do or not do the tasks. Thus, it is a distributed production model in which an online community is tapped.

Almost anyone who is at least 18 years old and has a computer connected to the Internet can perform Mechanical Turk tasks. On the other hand, anyone can submit a Human Intelligence Task (HIT) that can be done by utilizing an Internet-connected computer. For tasks that require special skills, the person applying to do the task can undergo some tests to ensure that he is qualified for the job. People who work for Mechanical Turk must have an Amazon.com account to take advantage of the security infrastructure used by Amazon for identity and payments. It is also easy to get paid using Mechanical Turk. The payment is automatically deposited into the Amazon.com account of the person who did a task after the completed work has been approved by a Requester.