But did you know that Google’s popular reCAPTCHA strand of CAPTCHA verification forms (as seen on YouTube and other Google products, plus any website making use of their API) actually serves another purpose than stopping spambots?

reCAPTCHA forms feature the slogan ‘Stop spam. Read books’ which isn’t just a bit of sensible advice, it’s actually a clue to the service’s second purpose.

The distorted words you see on screen are not just puzzles but extracts taken from old books and newspaper that Google is helping to digitise. When you solve the puzzle, you are actually helping to translate a word that was too smudged for their computers to read. Fascinating, huh?

But the second interesting thing is that this means you don’t really need to get the word right. reCAPTCHA always shows you two words, one clearly written, the other distorted. The clearly written one is the one you are being tested on, the distored one is the word Google wants you to translate for them. But as long as you get the clear word correct, you can submit the form. You do need to give the distorted word a go, but as long as you type something close, you’ll be able to submit. Useful to know when you’re looking at a seemingly impossible CAPTCHA puzzle with no hope of guessing what it says!

We’ve just installed CAPTCHA on Barbara Gerwit’s website as part of the Recommend to a Friend form, which was suffering from spam bot abuse.

Strides sell trousers, shirts and jackets for the older gentleman and offer great value for money.

They are a family business based in Nottingham and have been trading since 1963, but took their first steps onto the web with a site designed and built by Obvius Web Services at the end of 2011.