Google Maps as Turing Test

locr.jpgI just came across Locr, a geotagging and photo hosting tool not unlike Flickr (which I’m not going to review just this minute) but which does have one of the cleverest implementations yet I’ve seen of a Turing Test to keep out automated sign-ups: Asking users to read a Google Maps tile and identify the feature in the middle.

locrsign.jpg

Genius. And it now comes with an uploader for S60 phones like my Nokia N95.

One thought on “Google Maps as Turing Test”

  1. Nice idea.

    But I wonder how long would it take for a spambot to 1) get the coordinates from the displayed map 2) do the reverse geocoding 3) select the right city ;)

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