Check it out: video searching at Google. At first I thought this was the same thing as video searching at Yahoo. There it’s simply a matter of searching for files on the net that match one of several video formats (.mov, .ram, .wmv, and so on). Nothing special about that. But Google is doing something surprising: they’re digitizing TV broadcasts, and the text they’re searching for is from the Closed Caption text stream. Very clever! Listen to them explain how it works.
Since my son is autistic, I am often searching for news items about autism. Here is the search on Google. You see the transcripts for all kinds of shows and news about autism, including the new NOVA NOW show from WGBH that I was just watching tonight.
Compare that to what you see when you do the same search over at Yahoo.
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber 