Thursday, July 26, 2012

What IS This Captcha Thing??

This evening, brilliant author of FALSE MEMORY Dan Krokos cried out into the Twitterverse "WHY ME, CAPTCHA???" And I couldn't agree more. Captchas are the most frustrating thing, and they always pop up when you're doing something really important and time sensitive, which makes them even more annoying. I've abandoned transactions over Captchas. For SHOES!!

I thought no one could ever tell me a redeeming thing about Captchas. But I was wrong. The Amazing Emma Trevayne, author of the fantastic book CODA (coming Spring 2013, and it's sequel, CHORUS, just announced!), just told me that Captchas are actually real words from hard-to-read, faded, out-of-print texts. So, when you type them in, you're digitizing some old copy of the New York Times!

I quote Emma here: "over something like 3 months, internet users digitized something like 20 years worth of NYT back issues or something" Whoa!!

This is real:
Real on SmartPlanet.com
Real on Cracked

1 comment:

  1. I am comforted to know that my "wasted" seconds count! Just came over from the WriteOnCon - thanks for sharing on social medias!

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