RAMP-The Content Optimization Company

Last year on April 1, I was driving home listening to a great story on NPR, about how cheap foreign imports of Maple Syrup (from boiling discarded maple furniture) were harming the Maple Syrup industry in the Northeast.  Untapped maple trees would then explode, often harming and killing the maple farmers.  You can listen to the story on NPR’s page.

It might be worth following up on these other stories from a year ago:

• Bush Cancels Space Shuttle Program
• UN Votes to Shut Down Internet
• Google Releases DNA-Scanning Drink
• Bush Twins Enlist in Air Force, Deploy to Iraq

Enjoy!

Yesterday, our fearless leader Alex appeared on “Inside the Net,” a podcast by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur.  In it, they talked about closed captioning and how even those were riddled with errors.  (Check out Inside the Net 16, which features PodZinger, here.)

It reminded me of the classic closed-captioning error on ABC’s 4/23/2003 World News Tonight, which reported in its closed caption feed of Peter Jennings, that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was “in the hospital for the removal of an enlarged prostitute.”  ABC later issued a formal apology to Greenspan.

When Greenspan’s wife, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, was asked about her husband’s enlarged prostitute, she said:

 He should be so lucky.

I have a PodZinger RSS alert feed for the term “xbox” so that I can keep up on xbox news.  As I was checking my items this morning, I noticed an interesting video podcast from Attack of the Show from last Friday.  They had Dean Takahashi on, and he was talking about why he believes Microsoft is working on a handheld, an “iPod killer,” that will have video, music and games. 

Dean has been working on validating this rumor since last December, when there was an Xbox reorganization.  You can read Dean’s full story in the San Jose Mercury News blog.

A co-worker of mine told me a quote about how Bush compared picking a new medicare plan to buying a car.  Huh?  Is that supposed to mean that it is easy or hard?  What an ambiguous analogy.  I decided to try to see if I could find an audio clip on PodZinger where Bush actually says it, just to be sure what he’s making the analogy to.  I didn’t actually find him saying it, but I did find a clip from PBS where Bush is talking, and then the pundits talk about the car analogy.

So, I tried to think of a few ambiguous analogies.  Here we go:

• It’s as easy as setting the clock on your VCR
• It’s as easy as putting together that toy you bought your kids
• It’s as easy as filing an insurance claim 
• It’s as easy as finding the WMD’s
• Mission Accomplished!

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – March 20, 2006 – PodZinger, the fastest, easiest, and most- reliable podcast search engine (www.podzinger.com), today announced that users can now use the search engine’s revolutionary search capabilities to find the video podcasts most important to them. For the more than 70 million iPod and MP3 player owners looking to fill their gadgets with the latest viral videos, video podcasts, news, entertainment and gossip, PodZinger’s new video search feature introduces the only available technology that allows users to search each and every word of audio segments of video, yielding quick, point-in-broadcast results from an ever-growing universe of online video.

“The new consumer is a now consumer, one who demands instant, relevant results for the information they deem most important. PodZinger once again demonstrates its commitment to deliver a superior user experience by enabling consumers to find the information they seek quickly and most efficiently,” said Alex Laats, president, PodZinger. “The rapidly growing adoption of online video has produced the need for a technology that goes beyond surface-level search, and by providing word-for-word analysis of what’s being said, PodZinger’s video search technology enables users to unlock a world of online multimedia content. We understand what it takes to make video search a reality.”

The explosion of online video content, fueled by the growing adoption of broadband technologies in the home and office, as well as through increased offerings from media outlets such as MTV, VH1 and ABC, has heightened the need for an effective, user-friendly search engine to help users find their favorite topics. With PodZinger users now can search the ever-expanding world of video content. In the universe of searchable podcasts and vodcasts, the categories of information range from sports and science to art and the absurd. Harry Potter fans can find the latest news and reviews on their favorite student wizard, while snowboarders can seek fellow enthusiasts, and brides-to-be can find wedding information. With PodZinger, users can also find their favorite independent video podcasts—or vodcasts—such as Rocketboom, Homestarrunner and Ask a Ninja, the likes of which have gained millions of devoted fans since the advent of the vodcast.

In addition to the benefits to millions of online video users, PodZinger’s video search technology provides new opportunities for enterprises wishing to make their video archives keyword searchable for in-house purposes or to make available to subscribers or consumers. Advertisers will also find a new, more-targeted method for reaching customers who use keyword-specific searches to find relevant content.

Until now, video search queries performed with other search engines were restricted to the text attached to the file, called metadata—or by a rudimentary, slow scan of the audio content. With PodZinger, speech-to-text technology creates a text index of the audio, enabling users to find relevant content anywhere within audio and video podcasts and jump directly to the point where the keyword is spoken. From the PodZinger site, users can also subscribe to podcasts, download, view or listen to them, and even have PodZinger automatically deliver new podcasts on their own topics of interest using standard RSS feeds.

About PodZinger
PodZinger is powered by BBN Technologies, leveraging its 30 years of speech recognition research to transform multimedia content into searchable words. PodZinger opens up a previously untapped source of content via a simple Web search. So when it comes to finding what you want in podcasts and vodcasts…just ZING IT!

About BBN Technologies
BBN Technologies, an advanced technology and research and development firm, is focused on solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. From national security, information security, speech recognition and language translation, to integrating disparate systems and networks, BBN has been at the forefront of technological change for more than 50 years.

Known for pioneering the development of the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, BBN continues to create advances in Internet and networking technologies through its work on ad hoc networking, the semantic Web, quantum communications, and advanced protocols. Building on its substantial list of firsts, BBN operates the first metro quantum cryptography network, the first real-time foreign broadcast monitoring system, and has developed the world’s first stereoscopic digital mammography system. For more information on BBN Technologies, visit www.bbn.com.

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On my way into work today, I heard a news story about the lost productivity that will be experienced by companies with distracted employees talking about March Madness and figuring out their betting pools.  After reading Barbara’s blog entry today, I decided to try to find that news clip in PodZinger because I couldn’t remember the exact number.  So I typed “march madness lost productivity” and lo and behold, it came up with the dollar figure in the snippet in the first and third entries, both from CNN.  The figure that CNN is using is 3.8 billion dollars of lost productivity!  So I guess everyone will be standing around the water cooler or blogging .

It takes over our lives every year, those office pools attempting to predict who will make it to the Final Four. I’ve changed my approach after years of seeing the winner be the person that took the “dartboard” approach to picking teams! Even a article claims that “most knowledgeable sports fans” pick the winning teams only about 30% of the time. The same article points out that it is illegal, but let’s ignore that for now.

We’re having some fun at PodZinger predicting the outcome. It can’t be any worse than your average Joe. We’re tracking the buzz on which teams are being talked about the most. Take a look . Who do you think it will be?

Microsoft put together a humorous video poking fun of themselves about how they might re-design the iPod packaging. It is posted on Google video.

I just heard this news – PodZinger got named as Forbes Favorite Video & Audio Search Engine.  Check out our review by the Forbes editors in the “Look It Up” department, the “Look It Up” favorites, or look at the whole list of Video and Audio Search contenders. 

In their review, they even mentioned the same ”Ooops!” that I listed in my post on the Dubai ports deal - I wonder if they’re reading our blog??

Cool!

The Chronical of Higher Education had an article about the ouster of Harvard President Lawrence Summers.  As a sidebar, there was a short list speculating who might be offered the job, among which was the President of Tufts University, Larry Bacow, who also received his undergraduate degree in economics from MIT.  I heard that when Larry was asked about this article, he responded by saying:

 Do you think they would hire another economist from MIT named Larry?