Crowd Sourcing Communities

UTest
www.utest.com/
UTest is offering test services, tools, SDKs and integrated analytics in through crowd sourcing in the tester community. App developers is looking for people to test their apps, and UTest offers people with the expertise and competence in the right fields to test out the app in order to meet the needs of the app developers. A tester community that provides paid testing projects, hands on training, network, events career resources and more. It provides test on mobile apps, Web apps, Desktop apps, Emerging apps with test on its functionality, usability, locationlisting load and security in different industry areas for company size from start up to small and medium business to enterprises. UTest charge people through pricing based on app developers needs through 4 steps to determine the price by selecting the number of apps to test/type of app / testing need. From UTest, app developers are able to find a larger group of people to test their apps which helps developers finding out bugs and errors on their app through continue testing and running of the app through normal operations. 

Ponoko

www.ponoko.com
Ponoko is a 2D/3D design, manufacturing and direct sale community where users are those who want to make object that is customized and created by themselves through applications that is support by Ponoko. Users are able to select from a materials, fabric, leather, metal, paper, plastic, rubber, wood, 3D printed in order to make the product they created. Users are able to pay for a subscription $39s to become a Prime user that gets discount prices on making procedures and materials also hubs where the product will be made. furthermore Ponoko also provides free services for users by charging a standard pricing. Ponoko changes the way people purchase products, by giving them open source abilities to create and customize their own product and have it made and sell through Ponoko's web plateform.
Flickr
www.flickr.com 
Flickr is a photographic app that allow users to take, discover beautiful photos and socialize around it in the flickr community. Flickr allow photo sharing and and storage with 1000gb of free space. It provides a search engine that allow you to search they things you interest and it allow automatic sync with your other devices. Flickr give users a presence and motivation to engage in participating in the community, to take and share photos with others and make interaction and communication around those photos to increase social presence.
Flickr change the traditional way of photograph where it need to be printed and put into a album instead it allow quick access to photos and allows storage of photos with a simple smart phone device that allows access anytime, anywhere.

Chaoradix
www.chaoradix.com
Chaoradix is a community that crowd source innovation ideas in a large scale approach that with the insight of the community, chaoradix are able to offer brand innovations, product innovation and a B2B community, that helps SMB, enterprises and groups of individuals from crowd participations.
Chaoradix has a new way of people finding information that will be relevant for their business, company and enterprise in a way, where everyone is participating in finding a innovative solution to the problem. The platform chaoradix offers allow participation freely in a open source environment to create values for others.

Smartling
http://www.smartling.com/
Smartling has come up with a problem that in a globalized world every different people with diversity interact with others in business activities often have language boundary difficulties. Smartling has found a solution to use the power crowd sourcing to help translate business contents in websites, mobile apps, business documents and anything in the enterprise. With the help of a large scale of people from diversified backgrounds, their participation helps translating easy without any restrictions. Everyone that knows two different language can participate and with a lot of people who have the same competence, it gets the translation done quickly.

Amazon mechnical turk
https://www.mturk.com/mturk/
Amazon mechanical turk is a platform that offers crowd labouring on task focused on Human Intelligence Tasks an individual task you work on and you can make money from successfully completing the task and people who submit the task will get a result from people working on the tasks. What Amazon did is by creating a community a platform that offers workforce to help people completing their tasks through a open environment and a large scale workforce. This have changed the ways we utilizing workforce, with little investment we are able to have a large work force waiting to process tasks that can generate a possible result without paying too much or having too much effort. The tasks attracts possible candidates with the competence and possible innovative ideas instead of assigning candidates to the task. This get the tasks done from different approaches by different people with their way of doing

How we use tools to collaborate!

Communication is essential for our group to discuss project progress, share ideas and communicate on project matters. Firstly due to the project group are formed with people that does not each other and have limited knowledge on each others background, therefore communication will be difficult for some of us. The only chance for group members to meet will only be during class or meetings that made through agreement upon each other. The way we use to communicate is to email each other and txt meeting notice to everyone. But this is not a optimal solution for direct communication of information and work files.

We have discussed about creating a Facebook group for your project, as every member own a Facebook account and are able to log on easily, it will be a preferred platform for communication on project matters. Any project related information and discussions can be posted as a post with the function of link a website, upload image and videos are able to be posted directly onto Facebook with notifications that will notice every member in the group. This helps communication not only one to one but in broadcast.

In addition, the sharing of documents and files need to be optimized, we need a platform that documents can be uploaded and edited without any worries. The way Google Doc helps sharing of documents to people who are in groups and are able to perform live edit and updates to its server immediately. Furthermore we also need a cloud storage space for our other larger size files that allow us to share it through a public drive that our group member can have easy access to it anywhere and independently. 

Through those collaborative tools, our group are able to work independently without physically meet each other, we can have only meetings through Facebook in test form or live webcam meetings in Skype, this let communication between members much more directly and also our documents and files can also be upload and shared on a public space where members have free access and are able to edit and update them directly.

 

First time Second Life

Today, I had my chance to try out the virtual world of Second life. It was not hard to sign up an account all it needed was you email, a password and a username that you wish to be seen by others in Second life.  But what really interest me is that after supply all those basic information for an account. You are given the option to choose an avatar, not any avatar you have the options to choose from human, vampires, animals, robots and vehicles. Who have thought of such things that you can choose to become the things you can not be in real life and represent it as you identify in Second life.

I decided to choose my avatar as an human, nothing unusual and have made an avatar that suits my identify in person and in the virtual world. I am quite looking forward to see what Second life is all about. Once you log in Second life as a first timer, you are respwan  new a beach with a  ship wreckage in the water and you are required to follow the sign on road to complete a series of training. There are quite few new respwans near me, you are able to right click and a list of command that you can use to interact with other person either chat, follow and party with them. Also you can actually fly! But unfortunately you are immortal in the world and you can not die. Once you are follow the sign to the end of the road, there is a portal that teleport you out of the training part of the world into the other part of the second life world. From there you can actually teleport to different destinations, other part of world that are created by other players, you are able to choose from a list of destinations that are made upon creators interest to fulfil the needs and desires for those others. My first destination in the second world is an amusement park where its no different than the one in real life. I decided to ride one of the courses but it requires me to pay.  WHAT!? you have to pay just like in the real world. Unfortunately it is true, currency is part of second life and some part of the world require you to pay for the things you need. Strangely, a made up virtual world that allow you to do whatever you want still requires you to follow the rules in the real world. Or maybe it is a way for creators to make profit from Second life. There are a lot of other aspect that I have not experienced but it does raise my interest in the world of Second life and I would love to continue explore this different world.

However, it seems the game fulfils the needs of player in a way that's forbidden or seems unusual in real world. It still are rules that keeps players in order without messing up what other people created and their interest in certain areas in the game. It seems a lot of addiction where just by exploring the world alone, but if you find certain interest that attracts you and you can do it in a different identity without others judging you, I believe it could be very addictive. The game does have certain rules but they are not strict laws that will punish you in person, but only affect your avatar, I believe this gives you an excuse to do things that could be either unethical and unlawful in real world. Maybe this is the most interesting and addictive part of Second life. 

The things I don't like about Second life is the graphic not very good in todays prospect, it will be much more attractive, if the graphic can match todays standard. But maybe the game focuses on the interaction. Apart from the graphics that looks terrible, Second life is quite a nice way to spend off time.