Did you know that CAPTCHA actually is an acronymn and not just a clever name for those stupid letters and numbers you have to type to be verified that you are human-like?

I personally hate those things. I can’t tell the difference between O/0 and 1/ l and others. So I end up getting an error, which usually clears my password, and I enter the new CAPTCHA and forget the password, so it takes me three times to post.

BUT, this is cool. The nerd that thought up CAPTCHAS wants to make amends. He wants to capture the time we all waste and use it to digitize books! Now how cool is that? Somebody actually thought about that and realized that perhaps something good could come from something irritating.

Researchers estimate that about 60 million of those nonsensical jumbles are solved everyday around the world, taking an average of about 10 seconds each to decipher and type in.

Instead of wasting time typing in random letters and numbers, Carnegie Mellon researchers have come up with a way for people to type in snippets of books to put their time to good use, confirm they’re not machines and help speed up the process of getting searchable texts online.

“Humanity is wasting 150,000 hours every day on these,” said Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon.

Yeah, I’m up for that! Instead of an irritant, it would be my contribution to the gentrification of the blogosphere.