XeroK00L

Sounds like a fun research project. I'm in.

http://mixer.ldc.upenn.edu/

adidosc

sounds like easy money, but right now that's all i do at work is talk on the phone to strangers. the last thing i need is MORE of that.

Alexus-Kia

i still dont get it....whats the purpose they want u to call people??

Kia

XeroK00L

OK just got an e-mail from them that details everything you may want to know. Hope it helps everyone in making a decision.

So far it does sound quite interesting to me. Will report back later when I start making/receiving calls to/from the system.

--

Dear XXX,

First of all, thank you very much for signing up for the MIXER study.
Your account is now active and you may begin to make and receive
calls. Please excuse the long message. It includes instructions on how
to make calls and update your account. We have also added FAQ's to
this new activation message toward the end.

Here is your account information:

Email: xxx@xxx.com
PIN: 12345

You can now use your email and pin to log into the MIXER website and
make changes to your account. You will also need your PIN to make
calls, so keep it handy.

As indicated on our information page at

http://mixer.ldc.upenn.edu

you may participate in up to 15 calls in MIXER. There are two ways to
participate in calls:

(1) You may call into the telephone system at our toll-free number:

1-866-381-2878

at any time from 3pm to midnight (we recommend that you call within
the first 10 minutes of the hour to increase likelihood of being
connected to another participant). OR

(2) Our telephone system will call you during the evening on the
day(s) you selected for being available when you registered.

In either case, the system will ask you to enter your PIN, so please
have this available for when you get a call. You will then be asked a
couple of questions about the kind of phone you are using, and put on
hold while we try to connect you with another participant.

Important: It sometimes takes around 10 seconds to be connected to
your call partner. Please stay on the line for at least 10 seconds to
see if you are connected. If you do not get connected to another
person after around 30 seconds, please hang up. This may happen from
time to time. We are looking for ways to make the call system more
efficient to avoid this.

Please note that calling the platform is a great way to complete your
5 unique phone calls. Remember that a unique phone is one that you use
only once in the study. We suggest that you try to complete your
unique calls early in the study. This will help insure that you
receive the $50 unique call bonus. Be sure to use a phone that does
not use Call ID Block. MIXER uses your Call ID to distinguish phones,
not by the number the system asks you to enter. Some office/campus
network may report all the outgoing calls from a single
number. Unfortunately, there is no way for us to tell these calls
apart. Please avoid using these phones for dial-in calls. You may,
however, change your registration record every time you make a
successful call so that the system can call you at the new number next
time.


THIS IS IMPORTANT: your PIN is 19207. You must be ready to enter your
PIN whenever you make or answer a MIXER call.

Please be advised that when the telephone system calls you, our number
will appear as 215-573-9458 on your Caller ID device, if you have
one. Please do not call this number - it will not connect you to the
platform but to our support line instead.

Based on the information you provided when you registered, our
telephone system will try to call you at the following phone
number(s) on the days of the week shown below:

16501234567 Mo-Tu-We-Th-Fr-Sa-15-16
16507654321 Su-Mo-Tu-We-Th-Fr-Sa-21-22-23

The hours in this table are expressed using military time where 13
indicates 1:00pm.

You may only participate in a single call on any given day. If you
complete a call early in the day, our system will not call you again
(and will not accept calls from you) until the next day.

Our system will enter your call into the system as soon as recording
has started. A separate automatic process is being run to determine if
your call is technically acceptable (e.g. it has the required length
and it has enough speech). Because there's a lag of one or two days
between the recording and the checking, the system might say your PIN
is invalid even though you believe you have not made 15 successful
calls (e.g. you've only made 13 or 14 calls). If this happens, please
wait for a couple of days before you contact us for support.

If your telephone number(s) changed, or you would like to update
your availability, please login to the MIXER website.

http://mixer.ldc.upenn.edu

Remember, this study is collecting calls in a large number of
languages. When you are connected to your call partner, please check
to see if you speak any non-English language from the target language
list in common. If you do, please continue the call in that language.
If you do not, please continue the call in English. If you would like
to increase the chance of talking in your native language for the
foreign language bonus AND you know someone who is also participating,
we recommend that the two of you call into the platform at the same
time outside of the peak period - for example, later into the hour and
even outside of the normal schedule (3pm to 12am). However, our system
may be taken done outside of the normal schedule for maintenance.

A topic for the conversation is read at the beginning of each call.
This is a suggested topic only. If you do not like the topic, please
stay on the line and talk to your call partner about a different
topic.

The required length of each call is 10 minutes. A prompt will let you
know when that time has passed. You will then have up to a minute to
say goodbye to your call partner.

We thank you for your participation and your support of speech
technology research. We hope you will find it interesting to talk to
other participants in the project. If you experience any problems or
have any questions, please email us at

participant-care@ldc.upenn.edu

or call our support line at

1-800-380-PENN

Yours sincerely,

The MIXER Team
Linguistic Data Consortium
University of Pennsylvania
http://mixer.ldc.upenn.edu
participant-care@ldc.upenn.edu


========
Mixer FAQ:

Q1: I called into the platform and it said my PIN was not valid.
A1: Usually, it means that you've completed the target number (15) of
calls according to the database record. However the record also
includes calls that haven't been checked for length and/or
segmented. If you believe you have not made that many successful
calls, please wait for a couple of days before you try again or check
the status page when it becomes available. It may take one or two days
for calls to go through the automatic processing.

If any call is rejected and the problem is due to non-technical
reasons, we may allow you to do make-up calls.

Q2: Can you tell me more about the unique calls?
A2: Technically a unique call is one where the phone set is used only
once by you in the study. By this definition, if you have a cordless
phone and a corded one connected to the same line at home, they are
different from each other. However, because there is no reliable way
for us to tell them apart, they will be detected as single phone. It
is for this reason that we must rely on the CallerID even though it
does not always mean that different numbers imply different phone sets
(e.g. a two-line phone set or two SIM cards swapped in and out of the
same cell phone).

Please note that some company/college may have a special telephone
network such that all calls going outside of the network appear to be
originated from a single phone number. Please avoid using these phones
for unique calls. If in doubt, please call a cell phone from two
different phones in your office to verify if the CallerID shows
correctly. Likewise, if you have an internal telephone network (like
one line with several extensions), it will not work for us either.

Again please verify that your outgoing number can be recognized
correctly if you are using that phone for a unique phone set call.

Our ideal goal is to have 5 calls originated from 5 different numbers
and 10 calls from a single number.

Q3: I want to speak to someone in my native language, but I often end
up connected to someone who does not speak my language. Is there any
way for me to have a better chance of talking to someone in my native
language?
A3: One of the criteria the system uses to dial the available
participants in a given one-hour slot is the language - participants
who share a native language are dialed in one block. However, if there
aren't many participants for your language available when you answer a
call (or dial into the platform), your chance of being connected to
someone speaking your native language may be very low.

We're considering pairing participants manually and setting up another
platform for native language calls only. There will be some technical
details to be worked out and it may take sometime to implement. For
the time being, if you know someone in the study who shares your
native language, the two of you may arrange to call into the platform
at the same time. You will not be guaranteed to be connected to each
other, but if the two of you call toward the end of the hour
(e.g. 3:50PM), the chance will be better. You may also try to call
outside of the normal operating schedule (3pm to 12am). The platform
is usually open 24 hours a day except when it's being taken down for
maintenance. Please do not try to call the platform outside of the
normal operating period if you're only looking to be randomly
connected.

Q4: I'm in Canada and I registered for the study. But the toll-free
number does not work for me.
A4: Our toll-free number may not be accessible in some areas of
Canada. We do not know why or in which specific areas it is not
available. Since you can receive calls, the only way to get the unique
phone bonus is to change the phone number in your registration six
times for the platform to call you at that number. This is certainly
not possible for everyone, but we cannot think of other solutions. We
are really sorry that we're unable to solve the problem.

Q5: Which tax form should I submit? Why do you need it? When should I
submit it?
A5: This is one of the most commonly asked questions, especially from
non-US citizens. Please be reminded that we are not tax experts and
whatever we say here is not legally binding.

In general, if you're in the US and you will be filing resident tax
return for 2006, you should use W-9. If you're in the US filing
non-resident tax return, you should use Form 8233. If you're in
Canada, you should use "Certification of Foreign Source Income".

If you're new to this country (e.g. a new international student) and
you haven't filed any tax return yet but you already have or expect to
receive a tax identification number (usually your social security
number), it's safe to use Form 8233. If in doubt, please check with
your international student office or call IRS.

The reason we must collect one of the forms is that we are not
withholding any tax and therefore must have one of them on record by
law. We will not be able to pay you legally otherwise. You may submit
it any time but it must be in before your payment is processed.

The following documents from IRS give you instructions about Form 8233
and W-9, respectively.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8233.pdf
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/iw9.pdf

We would like to remind you that if you're in the US and are not
allowed to receive any compensation, please consider withdrawing from
the study unless you would like to volunteer. We will not be able to
pay you with appropriate tax form(s).

Q6: Why am I not receiving calls as scheduled?
A6: For a given one-hour slot, the system forms a participant list
based on several criteria and it resets the list regardless of whether
it finishes the previous one. If too many participants say they are
available in that time slot and you appear toward the end of the list,
the system may fail to call you in that hour slot. One way you may be
able to help in this aspect is to narrow your availability but put
some in less busy slots (like early afternoon or late evening). You
may always call in to make you calls.

Q7: I don't like the topic. Can I talk about something else?
A7: Yes. You can talk about anything else that's meaningful and can
keep the conversation going. This is not a social study and we do not
pay attention to the content of your conversation as long as it is
appropriate. If you prefer to talk about something that's interesting
to you, we encourage you to pick a new topic for each call to increase
the vocabulary being used.

Q8: What's the purpose of this project?
A8: In human language technology research and development, large
amount of data is essential. One of the major applications for this
collection is to help build automatic voice recognition systems - just
imagine the day when your bank or the cashier can recognize you just
by your voice. The technology should work on all kinds of phone sets
and microphones, and that's why you are encouraged to make 5 calls
from different phones. Imagine further that when you travel in a
country where you don't speak the local language, you can carry a
device that will do translation for you. The possibilities are
endless.

Q9: I'm done with my 15 calls. How soon would I expect to receive my
payment?
A9: We make payment requests on a monthly basis. If your calls have
been audited in a given month and your tax form is in, your name will
be on the payment list and you should expect to receive payment in 6~8
weeks after that. It is also beneficial to us to get the payment out
as soon as possible.

Q10: How long will the project last? I have friends who are interested
but are concerned that it might end soon.
A10: While we have a data delivery deadline at the end of February,
the project is expected to continue through the summer. We may,
however, add and/or drop some languages depending on how the
collection goes. Regardless, for any one who signs up for the project,
we'll give them at lease one month to finish the calls. So, please go
ahead and tell your friends to sign up for the study.

High PSI

iTrader: (1)

"For this reason, as a MIXER participant, it is necessary for you to be fluent in English and one of the target languages."

All I speaka is da english.