Gwap.com - Help Make Computers Smarter

Google ‘Gwap’ and you may get some interesting urban slang results or an exercise in ESP brought to you by the lovely folks at Carnegie Mellon. Gwap—the Carnegie Mellon version, that is -- stands for Games with a Purpose, and is part research, part fun.

It works like this: you choose a game (so far there are five), say ‘Matchin’ and you and a fellow internet surfer like yourself will be introduced to a pair of images. You and your new gaming buddy choose which picture is better and you’ve both got to agree. The catch? You can’t talk to each other. This game, although seemingly just for fun and giggles, garners a lot of useful data which can then be used to improve search, security, or simply problem solving. Humans, for instance, can still solve many problems that computers haven’t yet figured out Gwap may help bridge that gap. So give it a try, play and help science while you’re at it.