Peekaboom!

This game is so much fun: Peekaboom!

You are paired up with a random other player. For each round, one of you is a “peeker” and the other is “booming”. The boomer has a photograph in front of them and a word that associates with it (e.g. “balls”, “men”, “cooking”, “elephant”). They can click on parts of the picture to expose them to the peeker. The peeker has to guess what the thing depicted is. If the peeker gets it right, both players get points. The less of the picture was exposed, the more points the two get.

As the peeker makes guesses, the boomer can rate them as “hot” or “cold”, giving feedback to the peeker. The boomer can also pass limited clues in the form of “noun”, “related noun”, “verb”, etc. to the peeker. The players are against the clock to score as many points as possible before time runs out.

The really clever thing about this fun little online game is that it is being used as artificial intelligence research to teach computer algorithms how to spot the “important” parts of a picture: the bits that can be used to determine what the picture is of.

Give it a go, and contribute towards some AI research while you’re at it…

Suzannaless

Well; apparently our new year in industry person, Suzanna, won’t be working for us after all. She called up this morning to say that she had accepted a placement elsewhere.

Nia’s Back

Nia, the Technium receptionist who became badly injured after falling from Constitution Hill over six months ago, is on her feet again and well enough to come back to work. She’d only just started a permanent contract with the Technium when she sustained her injury, and now she’s back.

Minus a few physical changes (weight loss; presumabley during her coma), she’s still the “same old Nia”; happy, bouncy, fab.

A good pick-me-up to start what could be a busy and complicated day.