Regular readers may recall a while ago I covered an effort by Amazon’s Mechanical Turk system to help find a man lost at sea. This time there is yet another call for help using this tool to find a missing aviator, Steve Fossett.

I have been submitting HITs on this throughout the evening - the HITs are simple, look at a satellite image for items that may resemble his plane so those looking for him have an idea where he went missing. He was meant to have returned for refueling but went missing in Nevada on Monday September the 3rd. A number of organisations have donated their satellite imagery to help find him.

Please - if you have some spare time this week, try and help out and see if this man can be found safe and well…

About Mechanical Turk

The Amazon mechanical turk is a system where small jobs that are easy for humans to do, and easy for computers to divide up, collate and organise are distributed among said humans by said computers. For some, the human is paid for their effort, and others are free. Each small job, which may take mere minutes of your time or less, is called a HIT.

This set is a fairly worthy cause, and therefore no payment is offered. These are quite fun, and feel rewarding. I am personally trying to hit the 1000 HITs submitted mark.

I implore you to check it out, register, and at least help this guy out. You should also look and see if there are other HITs you are interested in, or ways in which you could effectively use this resource.

Links

Preview HIT on Steve Fossett - You will need to register to participate.