ReadWriteWeb

Perhaps you have some spare time on your hands, or perhaps you just want to do good for others from the comfort of your desk chair. Either way, a great way to fulfill these needs is to participate in crowdsourcing - community driven conglomerations of small efforts by large crowds of participants. The simplest form of crowdsourcing are online wikis like the open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia, and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other great examples. Here are a few great ways to get involved in the wonder of crowdsourcing.

Companies have been trying different ways to use crowdsourcing even before the word was first used in 2006. Last year saw the rise of it as a marketing tool, with some spectacular failures. Two memorable examples were Kraft, which was ridiculed when it changed the name of one of its products, and Toyota, which was criticized for a disturbingly off-color video.

gooseGrade has a unique and valuable perspective when it comes to blogging: Unlike traditional media, blogs are lacking the invisible army of copy editors carefully making sure everything that is written is also written accurately and well. Today they are releasing a WordPress plugin that invites your audience to help proofread your blog. GooseGrade got some press from RWW and others last October.

Best-selling crime author James Patterson will release a new kind of novel next month - one that's been collaboratively written with the crowd. Called AirBorne, the upcoming novel will feature 30 chapters, each written by a different author except the first and last - those will be written by Patterson himself. With the release of this book, it appears the Web 2.0 movement of collaborative writing is about to hit the mainstream.