One of the main problems with podcasts is not being able to search inside a podcast just like text based web content.
Pluggd seems to have the solution for that and it seems very promising from their demo. They are using speech processing and semantics to pinpoint the sections of the audio that contain the search term. It is called Hear Here!
I immediately signed up for the service to try it out. However, from what I understand only ESPN Sportscenter podcasts are search enabled at the moment. Their blog says the feature will be available site wide soon.
There is a demo available that shows how the technology performs on the ESPN podcast.
Today there was an article about Pluggd in Wired . Wired says that Pluggd is Google for Podcasts. There was also Techcrunch’s coverage of Pluggd here. I guess it will remain to be seen if this will be the case. However, if the technology works, it will potentially be a big hit.
For one, it would be awesome to search inside music podcasts for example. You would type in an artist or song name and all the podcasts that featured them would be listed.
I will be waiting for them to make the functionality globally available on their site.
Technorati Tags: pluggd, podcast search
[tags]podcast, audio search technology, pluggd[/tags]
