The topic of video search optimization was tackled by a group of panelists at the Search Engine Strategies conference held in New York City this week. Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search for Performics, talked about some of the trends he’s observed in the video search space. In particular, he made references to user-generated tags that segment scenes within a video file, so that instead of waiting several minutes to get to the part of interest, viewers can jump to a particular portion of the video to begin watching the content by clicking on one of the tags.

In the absence of a transcript to help search spiders crawl and properly index video files, it’s of no surprise to see real humans and not machines taking the lead to organize and segment video content available online. Video search engine PodZinger is tackling the tagging problem by running all of its indexed audio and video through proprietary speech-to-text technology to create text files that put a time stamp of every word mentioned in a file. Through this automated process, PodZinger makes it possible to search the entire content inside a video, and take the user directly to the section of the video of interest.
Neither approach to tagging video content is flawless. In the manual way, human errors can be made and it lends itself for the spamming of content by rogue content creators. Manual tagging will depend on online-users for policing and fixing misleading tagging of content. The automated way to tagging is not free of errors either. Even though machines and algorithms are making the decisions how to tag content, the human factor is still present and is much needed to continue refining and tweaking the algorithms to avoid incorrect tagging caused by music playing in the background, poor sound quality, or a thick foreign accent.

Personally, I believe automated and human tagging of video content will co-exist and not become mutually exclusive of each other since there are way too many factors to take into consideration for tagging video content correctly so that it can be properly indexed by web search engines.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re big talkers here at PodZinger. We’ve been up and running for over a year now and are frequently announcing tweaked and new features to improve our user’s experience. We also realize the importance of keeping our finger on the proverbial pulse of the online video/audio search industry, which is why we have spoken in over 20 industry conferences and trade shows.

We’re particularly excited about the upcoming Web Video Summit to be held on June 27th-28th in San Jose, CA. Our very own Bob Spina, V.P. of Technology will be speaking on two panels, one entitled “Video Search Engines” and the other “Going Corporate“. The Web Video Summit is all about exploring the creation and distribution of video over the internet. Whether you’re a content generator, distributor or wish to get into the business, you should drop by check it out.

The 2007 TED Conference begins today in Monterey, California with a theme of: “Icons. Geniuses. Mavericks.” This is a broader theme than those of past TEDs. Instead of being based on a subject, the conference looks to provide a platform for, as the TED website describes them, “fifty remarkable people” to discuss any subject they feel passionate about.

The Business Week article, “Forget Davos: I’m Booked Up For Ted” makes a few interesting points about the TED conference’s growing focus on “do-goodism” and drawing celebrities to the annual event. It will be interesting to see if the shifting focus of TED can still appeal to tech geeks as it looks to up its’ hip quotient with more expansive themes, higher entry fees and a humanitarian angle.

For more exposure to TED without the $6,000 entry fee go to PodZinger and check out the TEDTalks videos. You may be in good company, as some of the old school TED enthusiasts have decided to sit this high-profile TED2007 out.

A lot of exciting news has come out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week in Vegas, including news on the iphone, ehome, and the 102 inch plasma TV. However, equally interesting are the advancements we’re seeing as big media companies partner with technology partners in an attempt to deliver their content to an audience that is becoming as or more comfortable in front of their computer as they are in front of their tv.

One company making good headway in this regard is CBS. In his keynote address at CES, CBS President Les Moonves highlighted such technology partners as YouTube and Sling Media. YouTube currently hosts some CBS content and is using the relationship to attract more of the highly coveted 18-34yo market. Sling Media is developing technology that will allow CBS online visitors to share snippets of video with other users instead of sending an entire file. And not to toot our horn, but PodZinger was also mentioned alongside these companies.

To wrap up his address, Moonves had this to say about the merging of big media and technology companies,

“Anything is possible,” Moonves said. “Audiences know that, content people know that, and innovators in the digital space know that. In the weeks and months to come, we’ll have a lot more news on how we’ll be working with the interactive community in ways both big and small,”

Pretty exciting stuff!

Podtech hosted the first annual Vloggies Award last Saturday where they recognized worthy video bloggers who have done extraordinary work in promoting video blogging. Ask a Ninja won multiple awards including Best Vlog award, Best Comedy award and Funniest Award. Other notable mentions include Josh Wolf as People’s Choice Male Vlogger and Nontourage as Female Vlogger. A complete list of the winners can be found on the PodTech site.

When we started PodZinger, we knew podcasting and vlogging will be huge in the digital space and we definitely hit it on the nail as we see the medium growing stronger and more prominent everyday. The first annual Vloggies Award started with more than 600 nominations and we are sure that by the end of this time next year, there will be twice the amount of vloggers around.

The St. Louis Cardinals clinched the National League last night to go head to head with the Detroit Tigers for the World Series title. And it was a pretty interesting game too, considering it was tied in the ninth and determined by a two-run homer by Yadier Molina, who had a .216 ERA and only six home runs in pre-series games!

The series starts tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. ET in Detroit, and since Boston’s beloved Red Sox are out of the picture, it’s going to be a tough decision which I’ll be routing for. I usually go for the underdogs, but between the Cards winning the NL with a homer by a no-name player, and the Tigers going from being the worst team in the league during the past three years to the Series’ favorite, it’s going to be a hard decision.

Either way, I’m just glad the Yankees lost in the first round!

For all of you baseball fans out there, I’ve included a few links to some of my favorite baseball podcasts below. For more suggestions, visit PodZinger.

Baseball Geeks PodCast - Gregg Keer and Rob Reed present a MLB (with a Fantasy spin) podcast from links and information submitted to the BaseballGeeks.com and PlayerTrack.com sites.

Pro Baseball Central - A weekly radio show that discusses the happenings in Major League Baseball.

Baseball Prospectus Radio Podcast – Provides up-to-date news on happenings in the baseball world.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Star Trek and the occasion is marked with a three day auction of items from the archives of the show at Christie . According to the official site, the auction will have costumes, weapons, artwork, accessories, rare starship models and MUCH MORE!

It’s amazing that Star Trek still have such strong followings after 40 years and a quick check with our search shows more than 1900 results!

So, Trekkies, this weekend, head down to New York and “to boldly go where no man has gone before”!

Rocketboom ran a story I suggested (!): The Glass Pumpkin Patch at MIT. Steve Garfield, the Boston corresponent, did an interview of the MIT Glass Lab Director, Peter Houk. The patch is a great thing to see when they have all the pumpkins on display. They show over 1500 pumpkins! Look out for the Glass Pumpkin Patch next year at this time.