ASSIRA - from Microsoft Research

I failed yet another test today. I tried creating a user account on LifeRay and the CAPTCHA got me. I incorrectly deciphered a 'Z' to be a '2'. Some of the blogs I visit have these annoying tests to pass before I can leave a comment.

Microsoft Research's latest offering - ASSIRA ((Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access)- seems to be a fun test to take. You just need to say if the image displayed is a cat or a dog. And the images are cute. And the database is huge - over 3 milllion images.

Microsoft admits that it is not the first time that image recognition tests have been devised, citing past effort like PIX CAPTCHA and KittenAuth suggesting that their limitations was essentially the number of images in the database. Interestingly Microsoft also admits to be partly 'inspired' by HotCaptcha (I leave it to you to visit their website to figure out how HotCaptcha is supposed to work :-)).

To quote technicals from the Microsoft page:
"It's easy to add an Asirra HIP to your web site. Microsoft Research is providing it as a free web service. Be warned that Asirra is still in beta-testing; the service and its API may both be unstable.

Asirra consists of two components:
1. A JavaScript client component that you add to your web page inside a form. Our code will add an Asirra challenge to your web page. If the challenge is solved correctly, the client code gets an Asirra Ticket from our server, and adds it to your form as a hidden input field.

2. A web service at Microsoft Research that your form processor should call each time a user form is submitted, to check that the ticket provided is valid. "