SAN FRANCISCO -- Search engines have always been among the Web'smost popular destinations. Then came multimedia and frustration.
How do you find music with a keyword search?
In a sunny San Francisco loft, a tiny company called Friskit Inc.has spent the last two years honing a search engine that scans theInternet for songs and music videos available to Web surfers forfree but often difficult to locate.
Other search sites also are seeking refinements they hope willmake them indispensable in the multimedia age. As more and more Webusers get broadband access, such tools are sure to becomeattractive.
Google recently began offering searches of images on the Web,rather than just words. Google performs that feat not by analyzingan image itself but by reading the text labeling the picture.
Researchers at the "Googleplex," the company's headquarters inMountain View, Calif., also are looking for ways to more directlyconnect Web surfers to online databases and to run voice-activatedsearches from wireless devices.
With better search techniques over hand-held computers, forexample, someone in a grocery store pondering an unfamiliar itemcould instantly call up product information or compare prices, saidCraig Silverstein, Google's director of technology.
"Our mission is to organize the world's information and make ituniversally accessible and useful," Silverstein said.
Friskit is based on the notion that many users want linksstraight to a certain experience such as hearing a song ratherthan to static information.
Though analysts note that several other multimedia search engineshave come and gone without leaving much of a mark, Friskit'sexecutives hope to cash in by licensing their technology to Webportals, music sites, record labels or companies that want tocatalogue their multimedia presentations.
"Whether you want to find a Moby track, a Steve Jobs interview oran Osama bin Laden interview, you should be able to find it with oneclick," said Jeff Morgen, Friskit's chief operating officer.
Morgen and Aviv Eyal, Friskit's co-founder and technology guru,are aiming at the rapidly changing market for online music, whichgained prominence with the popularity of Napster but has been boggeddown in legal squabbles over copyright protection.
Bill Rose, who has researched the market as vice president andgeneral manager of Arbitron Webcast Services, said a multimediasearch engine offers Web surfers more choice and control thancurrent Internet broadcast sites, which have a more limited pool ofavailable content.
Friskit can lump songs by genre or by musician, so users don'thave to be precise in what they're looking for.
But even with such thoughtful features, it appears certain thatFriskit's life will get helter-skelter.
At least one competitor with similar multimedia searchtechnology, Seattle-based Singingfish Inc., already has signedpartnerships with RealNetworks Inc., and Inktomi Corp. and ispursuing deals with the big portals as well.
ON THE WEB
www.friskit.com
www.google.com
www.singingfish.com
No comments:
Post a Comment