Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a "crowd"), through an open call. Jeff Howe, one of the first authors to employ the term, established that the concept of crowdsourcing depends essentially on the fact that because it is an open call to an undefined group of people, it gathers those who are most fit to perform tasks, solve complex problems and contribute with the most relevant and fresh ideas. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm (see human-based computation), or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science). The term has become popular with businesses, authors, and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. However, both the term and its underlying business models have attracted controversy and criticisms. This book is your ultimate resource for Crowdsourcing. Here you will find the most up-to-date information and much more. In easy to read chapters, with extensive references and links to get you to know all there is to know about Crowdsourcing right away: CloudCrowd, Servio, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Article One Partners, BlooSee, BootB.com, Bossa (computing), Citizen Weather Observer Program, Closed innovation, Steve Coast, CrowdFlower, DARPA Grand Challenge, DARPA Network Challenge, Dell IdeaStorm, Digital sweatshop, Distributed Proofreaders, Distributed thinking, Experience Project, FamilySearch Indexing, Giveo, Google Lunar X Prize, GTS Translation plugin, I-Cube Systems, User:Sigma0 1/IdeaConnection, Ideawicket, InnoCentive, Innovation Exchange, IStockphoto, Kickstarter, Know-How Trading, Learning to love you more, Lectorium, LibriVox, List of crowdsourcing projects, Longitude prize, Maneno, Mass collaboration, Memrise, Microtask, Mygengo, MyStock, Netflix Prize, NineSigma, NotchUp, Open innovation, Open innovation intermediary, OpenSeaMap, OpenStreetMap, PageRank, Pea galaxy, Phylo (video game), Pitching engine, Pledgemusic, Quirky, ReCAPTCHA, Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes, RocketHub, SeeClickFix, Spigit, Spot.us, User:DonBerryWiki/Sandbox, User:DonBerryWiki/Starmind (Company), TurKit, Ubiquitous Human Computing, Urtak, Ushahidi, Utest, WBEW, Wikimedia Foundation, User:WikiMeistro100/Know-How Trading, The Wisdom of Crowds, Wisdom of the crowd, World Water Monitoring Day, Wreckamovie, Yet2.com, YouComm News, YouCut, Zooppa. Contains selected content from the highest rated entries, typeset, printed and shipped, combining the advantages of up-to-date and in-depth knowledge with the convenience of printed books. A portion of the proceeds of each book will be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation to support their mission.