As we reported previously, Amazon Mechanical Turk service is assisting in the search for adventurer Steve Fossett. Using quickly updated satellite imagery of the suspected crash area, people have been searching 256X256 squares for any sign of the aircraft.
There has now been an update on how the search is going, and it seems there have been some interesting leads. After each report is filed of a possible spotting, Mechanical Turk compares your report with any other reports for the same image. At that point, if the system determines there may be something of interest in the area, the image is passed up to search experts who utilize Google Earth to do a more in-depth view of the scene and surrounding terrain. While you might think the system would be overloaded, they state that the effort has filtered the search down to .03% of the total number.
They request that people continue working on the imagery as they are uploading new images from different sources even now. As there has been no mention of the plane being found, the hunt is definitely still on for the missing billionaire.
The below images show the more detailed work as they look for the downed aircraft.
(via Amazon Web Services Blog)
