Mechanical Turk and Artificial Artificial Intelligence....

Mturk is the latest buzz these days -- developers using web services to create human tasks. As unique as the mturk seems, this is in fact been what workflow systems have been doing for years. BizTalk does this to some extent (athough in my opinion it's strength is really its EAI). Ultimus,  another workflow system, also does this. What, I guess, is special about MTurk is that Amazon has created a public task board.

On another topic, this has also got me thinking about a twist to visualizing manual systems (people) on the System Designer. As a note, Bills been all about visualizing "little people", as he calls them, on the diagram for several months now as it allows us visualize users interaction with the system's members. It was thought that manual system would only allow UI consumer endpoints (or Web Content consumer endpoints). The concept above adds a little twist, it gives systems (or workflow) the ability to create task for users. This means that the systems are somewhat dependant on the manual system for input. I find this facinating...

Ali