Searching for a podcast online is a hit or miss proposition. But in the near future, AOL plans to start listening into podcasts, using voice recognition software, for better search results.CHICAGO—Imagine if librarians organized book collections based on a 14-word description of each title. The results, no doubt, would leave much room for improvement.
That's loosely the case for the growing number of features for finding podcasts, which are very much in the vein of radio shows, but are downloaded any time from the Internet.
But now comes some hope for those looking for a better way to sort through the growing number of podcasts on the Internet.
America Online is at work on a search engine that, in theory, would let someone seek out and listen to snippets of podcasts that contain a particular word or phrase they are searching for.
Click here to read about the potential of podcasts.
What AOL's attempting to do represents a quantum leap from how search engines now categorize podcasts, of which there are an estimated 50,000 and growing.
Nearly all of the major search engines' podcasting services rely on "show notes," which is a written description of the program by its producers. It's an extremely rare service that lets you search the podcast's actual contents.
But the average show note is little more than 13 words long, according to a recent study by San Francisco-based Blinkx, a Yahoo competitor that specializes in audio and video search.
So few words can't possibly do justice in describing all aspects of a Podcast, which on average is about 20 minutes long, critics said.
Just how improved the service is remains to be seen when AOL's service is launched. The technology from Fairfield, Conn.-based TVEyes that's behind the pending service is able to accurately capture about 80 percent of what's said, according to David Ives, CEO of TVEyes.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: America Online Lends Podcasting an Ear
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