8seek

Wired has posted about a new search engine, Pluggd, which is currently in beta testing and available as a demo to test out.

The basic principle behind the new site engine is explained by Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk:

“First, the company uses parallel servers to churn through audio, performing a speech-to-text analysis of each file at faster-than-real-time speeds. The company also maintains what it calls a “concept map,” a database that tracks associations between words by analyzing Pluggd’s speech-to-text transcripts and looking for words that often show up in the same contexts. This tool also studies text web pages, so the concept map learns to associate words faster than Pluggd can analyze audio files.”

As podcasts, digital radio broadcasts, and audio in general exponentially grow across the web, a search engine like this will become vitally important in finding recorded information. Programs that can analyze audio have been around for a while, but if Pluggd succeeds in its mission, it will be like nothing else available on the web (until someone else builds a mirror of it).