After years of pouring over tiny photographs of artwork in books, this project instigated by Google, has to be the art lovers dream.  Initially the project started with only 17 partners in 9 countries but this has totally changed this year, with a dramatic jump up to 151 partners across 40 countries.  This leap forward with participating museums and artists is understandable.  The Internet is a rich and dynamic realm to show off both the art and the museum at the same time.  As with all skilfully crafted web projects, the end result is sublimely immersive and totally addictive, as art you may never have searched for independently, is presented to the user, allowing them to explore the correlating art period, artist or museum.

To many, this is a natural progression for the technology behind Google Maps and Google Earth.  The website utilises the ‘Street View’ understanding we have, when using Google Maps and allows us to literally walk around the museum in the same way as when virtually walking around at street level in the UK.  It also allows us to have an intimate understanding of a painting, unparalleled until now.  Some of the images are only high resolution but the majority appear to use the Street View/gigapixel technology Google does so well.

In total, there are 30,000 pieces of artwork or sculpture to peruse.  Navigating around the site is at the hands of the user, as there are a few ways to experience the art encapsulated within this site.  There is a slideshow view, if you want to quickly see artwork, followed by the ability to browse by Artist name, the collection, the artwork, the type of art, the country, city or user’s own gallery.  If you wish to look at a specific artist, there are then further options to look at either all artwork by this artist on the site and then to also pull in other artwork from the same period.  I am sure there are many history of art students who will find this feature invaluable when typing up homework projects.

To allow the user further control and participation, Google have set up an area for the user to create their own galleries, with their favourite artwork on the site.  This will require a Google mail account and this further links into Google+ and Hangouts by allowing these saved User Galleries to be uploaded to these areas, along with sharing on YouTube too.

When studying a specific piece of art, the first bit exploring the user is likely to do, is click into the painting until you are at brushstroke level.  It is every bit as fascinating as you can imagine, seeing the tiny detail these artists replicate onto canvas.  A new level of appreciation is certainly warranted.  It is then every bit delightful to click the museum view icon and see the genuine painting or sculpture situated in the museum it resides in.  I had a good look at the physical engravings on the ‘Piedra del Sol (1250 – 1500) at the Museo Nacional de Anthroplogia in Mexico and then I jumped into museum view to have a look at how it sits with the other exhibits on that floor of the museum.  This gives me a feeling of visiting the museum without even leaving my desk and it is unlikely in my lifetime I will ever visit the amount of museums listed on this site.  As you walk around the virtual museum, any item available within the Google Art Project site has a plus symbol next to it, allowing you to click and return to explore the artefact in detail.

Google have even added an area for people who are in the field of education.  There are handy sections with ready-made areas to test students on called ‘Look Like an Expert’ and then there is a DIY area, where quality suggestions are made on topics for teachers to develop galleries to engender talking points and vast understandings of artwork throughout the ages.  Unfortunately, all the images on the Google Art Project are copyright protected, although within the educational area, there is a resource section and within those websites, there are a number of sites with material available for you to use your printer and print off onto office paper or specialist glossy paper for a smart effect.

Overall, this is an impressive site with a huge amount of beautiful imagery.  Why not have a go at saving images into your gallery and share it with your friends to see how they feel about the art that talks to you.  You are guaranteed they will see a side of you, they were probably unaware of until now.

Here at the office we stumbled across something the clever people at Google have devised using their ‘CAPTCHA’ service.  We would totally understand if the word has little meaning to you and is in fact an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.  We can be almost guaranteed you understand the application though and have used it many times, as the service it provides is used by sites to increase security and cut down on fraud and spamming.  CAPTCHAs ask the user to verify who they are by asking the user to decipher two words.  The first word is much distorted and the second word clearer.

Amazingly, this process is a test to allow the computer to recognise the difference between a human user and a computer programme.  Human beings have an exceptional ability to decipher these squashed and malformed words with uncanny accuracy and considering Google believes the world population uses around 200 million CAPTCHAs a day across 40,000 websites, we are collectively spending a huge amount of time figuring out these hard to read words.

In this age of trying to cut down on office supplies and paper usage, there are several printers with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) such as the HP Colour LaserJet2840.  The only issue with this type of software is the computer’s inability to be able to decipher some of the scanned words.  New documentation is not so much of a problem but Google have found whilst trying to log books for Google Books and old copies of the New York Times, approximately only 20 percent of aged words are understood and translated.

Now this is where the really cool part starts, Google has devised an application called reCAPTCHA, which works in exactly the same way to stop websites using ‘bots’ and programs to invade peoples inboxes with spam; with the added advantage it also brings up a genuine scanned word from a pool of words uninterrupted by OCR for people to decipher.  This is a brilliant scheme from Google as it utilises the time people already put into using CAPTCHA systems and turns those effectively wasted minutes into a useful documentation conservation programme.

There is some clever science behind the reCAPTCHA application.  The image it serves up to you contains two words.  One is known to the application and becomes the control word whilst the other is not.  The computer further enhances the distortion to both the words to make it illegible to any computer programme and by typing the control word correctly; the computer will decide you have typed the other word correctly by default.  To make sure the suspicious word has genuinely been deciphered, the word is sent out with another randomly selected control word to a selection of users.  After three users decipher the word and it is different from the OCR programmes guesses, the word will then in turn become a control word.

Google have further ways of determining the efficiency of the guesses and so far the level of accuracy has knocked the OCR tools attempts of 83.5% with a 99.1% success.  Here are some other stunning statistics.  After one year of engaging in the programme, 1.2 billion CAPTCHAs have been translated which then equals 440 million suspicious words decoded.  Google then show a breakdown of the analysis to a daily basis and the figures add up to the equivalent of 160 books per day being deciphered. This would require a taskforce of a staggering 1,500 people working a 40 hour week!  The cost of employing people to manually transcribe documents is excessively expensive and when the figures are put into context it becomes clear how genius the idea of harnessing spare human brainpower is.

If you would like to help with this initiative, there are a couple of ways to do it.  If you have a website, you may want to consider putting reCAPTCHA on the site to stop spam.  Google advise they have plug-ins for applications like WordPress and they also have user-friendly code for standard html.  The alternative is to add it to your email address when it is posted onto a website.  If you utilise Mailhide, part of your email address is knocked out and reCAPTCHA must be solved to reveal the address and in turn stops spammers from finding out your real address.

After reading the science behind the application, it is surely only the first foray into what this might be used for in the future and we looking forward to seeing those ventures unfold.

With the publishing of this post, today marks the official launch of The Supplies Group Blog.  Our blog is designed to be a source of valuable information for UK businesses and school and government administrators, covering topics such as news, business tips, product and office technology reviews, product specials and deals, and offbeat articles just for fun.  It is important to us that our articles are as helpful as possible, so we encourage our readers to contribute comments and requests.  Here are the details…

In our News section we’ll cover current events and other breaking news that affects small to medium businesses, schools and other government agencies.  These stories will not only keep you in the loop about current events, it may just bring to your attention to potential opportunities to further build your business.

If news isn’t your cup of tea, then go on and check out the Business Tips section. Our unique business tips can range from how to cut down your expenses to making your workplace a friendlier place.  I can promise there will be something of interest for all business owners or managers.

The next topic that you can’t afford to miss is in our Deals section. This is where we keep our readers up to date on new deals, specials, and sales.  The next time you need to reorder some printer supplies, or need a new printer, be sure to check out this section beforehand – you never know when we might just be having a great deal on printers or printer supplies. Sometimes we’ll even be having special deals found only on the blog, so check in every so often to make sure you’re not missing out or subscribe to our RSS feed.

We are also introducing product reviews designed to provide objective information to help you choose the right solution if you’re in the market for a new printer, printer ink or toner. Our print technology experts take pride in their reviews so stay tuned as we add reviews on both new and existing printer products.

Technology is an ever changing part of business and it seems like every day there is a new gadget out, so stop in and read a few articles from our Technology section. We’ll keep you up to date on the latest and greatest technological advancements out there.

Lastly, since all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, we hope to help get you through your week with a laugh here and there in our Just for Fun section.

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