After 2 weeks, search for Fossett scaled down
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Nevada authorities are scaling down the search for U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett after an intensive two-week effort, officials said on Monday.
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Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who risked his life seeking to set records in high-tech balloons, gliders and jets, was declared dead Friday, 5 months after he vanished while flying in an ordinary small plane.
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(InfoWorld) - Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk is enlisting human eyes to help in an online search for missing adventurer Steve Fossett. Mechanical Turk is a Web service hosted by Amazon that lets anyone combine human intelligence with computer programs. The site aims to make up for a specific failure that persists in computers. "Humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs -- something children can do even before they learn to speak," the site explains. Friends of Fossett have set up a project on Mechanical Turk that could help identify the location of his airplane. Fossett set out in the plane in Nevada on Sept. 3 and hasn't been heard from since. Anyone can visit the Mechanical Turk site and lend a hand. Instructions on the page ask participants to view satellite images within Google Earth of the region where Fossett is thought to be. If they see anything that might resemble the airplane, they can mark the satellite image as containing an object that should be looked at more closely. Participants are asked to mark an image if they are at all suspicious that it contains something of interest. The project also cautions people not to worry that missing a detail will be tragic, because many people will look at the same image. Marked images will be further examined by experts. Mechanical Turk was also enlisted in the hunt for Jim Gray, a prominent computer scientist who went missing after setting off on his sail boat earlier this year. He has not been found. The Fossett effort also includes airplane and helicopter searchers. Fossett is well-known for being the first person to fly a plane solo around the world without refueling and also for making it around the world in a balloon. He has set 115 world records or world firsts, has swum the English Channel and completed the Iditarod, a dog sled race in Alaska, according to his Web site. While people helping to hunt for Fossett and Gray are volunteers, other Mechanical Turk projects pay participants, usually less than $0.25 per task. Mechanical Turk isn't the only online service that relies on human intelligence. ChaCha.com, a search engine launched last year, uses human "guides" to provide search results. A user inserts a search term and a remote worker searches for the answer, sending links to Web pages back to the user. The guide may be an expert in the subject the user is searching for so may be able to find better results than other search engines, according to ChaCha. Mahalo.com is another search site that uses people to compile results for common search terms. Workers weed out spam sites, pages with overbearing advertising and sites that use information without giving appropriate credit to the source.
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RENO, Nevada  - Air crews searched a 10,000 sq mile area of the Nevada and California desert for a fifth day on Friday but still had no clue on the whereabouts of missing U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett.
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Steve Fossett, a tycoon-turned-record-seeker who became the first person to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon, vanished Monday while flying a single-engine plane over rugged terrain in Nevada, authorities said.
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Tools from Google Earth and Amazon.com are being applied by users to help in the effort to find missing aviator and adventurer Steve Fossett.
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The search for adventurer Steve Fossett was expanded by thousands of square miles as it entered a fourth day Thursday, with rescuers warning it could be weeks before the missing aviator is found.
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The hunt for missing aviator Steve Fossett has ground to a virtual standstill, police said Monday, two weeks after the adventurer&#39;s plane vanished over the Nevada wilderness.
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Two weeks of negotiations at a U.N. conference ended with a weak pledge to start limited, informal talks on ways to slow down global warming.
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Searchers completed their first overnight hunt for Steve Fossett, organizers said today, after hopes were dashed that wreckage of the missing adventurer's plane had been found. Fossett vanished after taking off Monday from a ranch in Nevada.
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Hopes may be fading for finding adventurer Steve Fossett alive, but the search for the missing adventurer has been intensified, with a high of 36 planes in the skies looking for him  Wednesday and Thursday morning.
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RENO, Nevada  - Air crews planned to search a vast area of the Nevada and California desert for a fifth day on Friday in the hope of spotting missing U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett.
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Search for missing Madeleine McCann winding down more than nine months after she vanished
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RENO, Nevada  - The search for missing U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett resumed on Wednesday as his friend, British billionaire Richard Branson, tried to find him through a satellite mapping service offered by Internet data provider Google.
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A search for missing US adventurer Steve Fossett resumes in the Nevada desert, officials say.
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And rocket-powered cars Letters Sad news this week as California coastguards were forced to call off the search for Microsoft researcher Jim Gray who has been missing since setting out in his yacht last Sunday. A respected IT personality and database developer, Google chipped in with an offer to use its high resolution satellite imagery to aid the search:â¦
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A search for missing US adventurer Steve Fossett is to resume in the Nevada desert shortly, officials say.