Monday, March 12, 2007

Exclusive: Defense Contractor has Analyzed, Transcribed and Organized 1.5 Millon YouTube Clips

View a transcript of this interview

A major defense department contractor, BBN of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has applied a national security technology application, developed to fight terrorism, to "crawl" the audio tracks of public Internet videos through its PodZinger subsidiary. 

PodZinger has analyzed, transcribed and organized some 1.5 million YouTube clips since December and is crawling many thousand every day, according to Alex Laats, who heads the unit.

PodZinger's speech-to-text technology has evolved from its post 9/11 work on behalf of the Department of Defense and other U.S. government agencies.  Since the terrorist attacks, the company has received some $50 million in government funding. Beet.TV has learned that the technology has been used  by government agencies to analyze electronic media in part by determining if audio is in English, Arabic or Chinese. 

Similarly, PodZinger analyzes the language of clips and determines whether they are music or have speech.  If there is speech, a transcription is created which is nearly 80 percent accurate, company executives say.

BBN has retained the rights to apply this technology to search public Internet video.  It has  been seeking to monetize this business through a "white box" solution.  Selling a customized search engine for Web sites. 

It is also seeking to monetize this technology through contextual advertising. Last month, the company launched a public portal organized around various topics including sports, politics, lifestyle, etc.  It is on the public portal where much of the YouTube clips can be found.   Ads are placed around the YouTube players. PodZinger does not insert ads into the clips.

Search queries find moments within a video which match the specific search term.  When the video is found, a transcription brief of that point in the clip is displayed. 

The development of effective video search is critical to the success of online video.  BBN is not the only company in video search to bring national security work to this effort. Similarly, Blinkx, another video search technology firm has its roots in the national security work of Autonomy, a company closely associated with it.

Superstar VC Jim Breyer of Accel Partners is a board of member of BBN.  It was Accel and General Catalyst Partners who bought BBN from Verizon in 2004.

Update 3/15:  See Alex Laats demonstrating Podzinger on Beet.TV

Podzinger_2

-- Andy Plesser

, , ,

«Previous Post           Main           Next Post»
Trackback

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c0d2f53ef00d8342b44b353ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Exclusive: Defense Contractor has Analyzed, Transcribed and Organized 1.5 Millon YouTube Clips :

» Beet.TV: Defense Contractor has Analyzed 1.5 Millon YouTube Clips from pligg.com
A major defense department contractor, BBN of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has applied a national security technology application, developed to fight terrorism, to "crawl" the audio tracks of public Internet videos through its Podzinger subsidiary.
[Read More]

» US Anti-Terrorism Technology is Monitoring YouTube Videos from Silicon Valley Watcher--reporting on the business and culture of disruption
Andy Plesser over at Beet.TV has an interesting interview with Alex Laatsfrom Defense contractor BBN about using advanced technologies to analyze and transcribe YouTube videos with 80 per cent accuracy.Beet.TV Exclusive Defense Contractor has Ana... [Read More]

» Alex Laats Interviewed on Beet.TV from BlogZinger
This past Monday Andy Plesser of Beet.TV posted an interview with PodZingers CEO Alex Laats on www.beet.tv. The article, Exclusive: Defense Contractor has Analyzed, Transcribed and Organized 1.5 Million YouTube Clips, features a video of the int... [Read More]

 

Comments

I am interested in transcribing video clips from my home. I can type 85 wpm accurately and have a very flexible schedule.

 

BBN famous as the company that won the contract to build the ARPANET (or switches for it) that was the origins of the Internet.
Molly

 

Post a Comment

(Not displayed with comment.)


Video sponsored by: thePlatform

-->
Beet.TV Alerts
Get Beet.TV by Email

Featured on Beet.TV

Recent Posts
Archive Calendar
September 2010
 
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30

 

 

Archives

» View Archives by Category

» View Archives by Date

 

More Information

Advertise

Custom Services

About Us

Beet.TV in the News

Terms of Use

Contact

Copyright © 2006-2008 Beet Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

Beet.TV is published by Beet
Media LLC