Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

There are currently a few companies out there that have some really great, prospective search technologies. These features can benefit a Google, MSN, and more. Riya is looking to add facial recognition techniques, Podzinger searches audio within Podcasts, and blinkx searches primarily video (besides other formats).  Read on for the full story.

First up is Riya, a CA based company that is currently working on facial recognition techniques. Actually as we speak the beat version of the software is being released to test users. You open your pictures folder to the system and it ‘scans’ your photos. Then is prompts you to identify the people in the photos and saves this information. Like any other network (such as the web) the product functionality and performance increases as the number of users on the system and identified faces in the system. AS this increases the company hopes to let you search for a person or character and it or another search engine return the correct results (Unlike today’s photo searches that only rely on the text tags manually entered as the filename, not the file itself).

Podzinger analyzes the sound waves in Podcasts to help you search through the millions out there, without having to listen to everyone. This is obviously extremely beneficial. Unfortunately, it does not understand the context of the information presented, but it does allow you to listen to portions of the podcasts that it found. “When you type in a word or terms, PODZINGER not only finds the relevant podcasts, but also highlights the segment of the audio in which they occurred. By clicking anywhere on the results, the audio will begin to play just where you clicked.  There are also controls that let you back up, pause, or forward through the podcast. Or you can download the entire podcast.”

Finally, blinkx started to hit the radar when Google, Yahoo, and MSN launched their video search functions. Unfortunately, the major three only searched, that’s right, the text (or metadata) not the video files themselves. Blinkx actually made deals with various stations to analyze their video content and attach metadata tags to the video for advanced search functions. Since I have last looked at them, their video search capabilities have drastically improved and they have worked their way up to version 3.5, adding MS office files, podcasts, mp3s, PDFs, blogs, iTunes, and more.

It will be interesting to watch these companies evolve, as they become acquired, die, or go public in the future. There are many companies that have developed these same features and more but these are just three that have been grabbing my attention.