TAKA DESIGNS

What is crowdsourcing? Think of it as taking a task performed by an employer or contractor and outsourcing it to a large group of people or community. It’s been done on review sites like Yelp, articles on Wikipedia and even voting for contestants on American Idol.

Let’s take a look at Yelp. Review sites have been around forever. You’ll probably remember Citysearch as one of the more popular ones. So why has Yelp been so successful? In July 2009, it had an estimated 8.6 million unique visitors and 80% growth from a year ago.

Continue reading →

Anyone living in Los Angeles knows how bad traffic can get. Google Maps has a great feature that shows traffic conditions on major freeways. It’s something I’ve been using for a while now on my mobile phone when going out around town. When you zoom in on a city in Google Maps, there’s a “Traffic” button on the upper right corner that will overlay traffic conditions. It will even show you traffic conditions on a given day and time using past conditions!

Continue reading →