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blinkx reaches milestone with 14 million hours of content and 200 media partnerships

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blinkx.jpgblinkx today reached a new milestone: with 14,000,000 hours of video, audio, viral and TV content and more than 200 partnerships.

“The popularity of online video is at an all time high,” said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx. “We are not only offering users the largest index and the best way to find online video, but we’re developing solutions to help media companies monetize and manage their content.”

Following a successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange (AiM) in May, blinkx announced a global partnership with digital entertainment services company RealNetworks, in which blinkx powers video search for the new RealPlayer 11. In recent months, the company also announced technology partnerships with search leader Ask.com and with Lycos MIX, a platform that lets users create video playlists.

Originally posted on July 23, 2007 @ 11:30 pm

iRazoo launches people powered, points driven search engine

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iRazooWhile social networks sprout like mushrooms around the web, it’s refreshing to find out that some netrepreneurs would develop startups that are not mainly social networks for a change.

iRazoo, the “world’s first people-powered, points driven, search engine”, launches today with it’s unique function of giving users the opportunity to register and earn points whenever one uses the engine. So think Google or Yahoo, only this time, you have to register to earn points. By performing a regular search query, you get search results that are real-time compilation of the top search results from the best search engines, and for each search, you receive 2 points. You can also receive points by referring a friend, which will earn you 10 points each referral.

Here are the benefits of iRazoo, as stated on their site:

  • You get excellent search results (we aggregate all the data from the best search engines on the planet!)
  • You get to help further refine our excellent search results for others as well as benefit from other’s refined search results
  • You get points for each search you peform, each website you recommend/not recommend, and each referral you make
  • Best of all, you get to exchange your points for fantastic prizes!

You can view more about the process and the technical explanations of iRazoo here.

Originally posted on July 24, 2007 @ 8:24 pm

Microsoft Live Search enhances privacy protection features

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Microsoft Privacy ProtectionFollowing Ask.com’s efforts to ensure online privacy protection, Microsoft launches enhanced privacy protection features for Live Search, giving users control over what information they give to personalize web search.

Among the steps Microsoft plans to take include anonymous search query by permanently removing cookie IDs, IP addresses, and other identifiers.

“We have been thinking deeply about privacy related to search and online advertising and believe it is critical to evolve our privacy principles,” said Peter Cullen, chief privacy strategist at Microsoft. “We believe our enhanced principles should be part of the industry dialogue on this issue and that keeping these issues as simple as possible for consumers is the best approach. For instance, on search data, anonymous should mean anonymous.”

With Ask.com and Live Search responding to privacy related concerns of various users, one can only hope that Yahoo and Google, as well as the other search engines, will follow suit.

Originally posted on July 23, 2007 @ 3:16 am

Ask.com adds privacy control feature

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ask.jpg Search engine Ask.com has announced its plan to implement a new product called AskEraser that will offer its searchers unmatched control over their privacy when searching for information on the Web. With this, Ask.com becomes the only major search engine to commit to giving consumers the control to prevent retention of their search history at the time of their search.

This new feature will ensure that search history will not be retained by Ask.com. Searchers will have easy access to AskEraser and can change their privacy preference at any time. Once selected, searchers’ privacy settings will be clearly indicated on search results pages so they always know the privacy status of their searches.

“AskEraser is a great solution for those looking for an additional level of privacy when they search online,” said Jim Lanzone, CEO of
Ask.com. “Anonymous user data can be very useful to enhance search products for all users, and we’re committed to being open and transparent about how such information is used. But we also understand that there are some who are interested in new tools that will help protect their privacy further, and we will give them that control on Ask.com.”

Originally posted on July 19, 2007 @ 9:40 pm

European Commission backs up web search project Theseus with $166M fund

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Next generation search engine project Theseus recently received a $166 million backup fund by the European Commission to further its research, development and testing, in what some say could be the next Google killer.

The idea behind Theseus revolves around developing a “semantic” Internet that provides users information that’s narrowed according to individual needs and preferences. As reported, the goal of Theseus is to develop “new search technologies for the next generation Internet, ” including “semantic technologies which try to recognize the meaning of content and place it in its proper context.”

Research analyst Trip Chowdhry is confident that instead of taking it as a competition, Google will most likely take advantage of Theseus. “I don’t see this as a threat to Google,” Chowdhry said. “Even if they do come up with a semantic Web, Google will index it and create searches on it like it does for Wikipedia.”

Apparently, Theseus was founded as early as 2005, and has since dedicated itself to the said advanced multimedia search project.

Originally posted on July 21, 2007 @ 5:08 am