I have a confession to make. I hate CAPTCHA. I just find it annoying to have to jump through hoops to leave a comment on a blog; this is supposed to be fun! Depending on how long and garbled the letters are, I might have to try two or three times before I get it right. It's gotten to the point where I avoid leaving comments on CAPTCHA'd blogs. Bad, I know, but there it is.
However, some clever people have found a way to make CAPTCHA useful. They've devised a system whereby people can help digitize books by typing in words that computers have had difficulty deciphering. They pair the undecipherable word with one that has been correctly identified by the computer, and put both into the CAPTCHA box. If you get the deciphered word right, you pass, and they get an answer for the other word. Of course they run the mystery word by a number of people to make sure they get a reliable answer.
If you'd like to find out more, visit reCAPTCHA. Let me know if you decide to put it on your site—I'll drop by and leave a comment!
