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Engines for
Multimedia Search
Ran HockOnline Strategies
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Some Facts / Observations
• Different tools for different media.
• As with “Web” search, even for the same question and type of media, you may want to use more than one engine.
• Indexing is a problem – In some cases getting better, much better.
• Search “qualifiers” are often quite limited.
• Use the “big” services, but also take advantage of the specialized services.
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What The “Big” Services Offer
Images Audio Video
Google X X
Yahoo X X X
Ask X coming
Live X X
Exalead X X X
AOL X X X
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Image Search Engines
• Indexing problem• For most images, few words on Web
pages that are definitively descriptive of the image
• Tagging could “theoretically” help. BUT – not for 1 billion images, not with any consistency, not without high spam risks
• Start with not more than 2 search terms
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Major Image Search Sites• Google – high numbers, often low relevance• Yahoo - lower numbers, often higher relevance• Ask.com – often very low numbers, high
relevance and recall• Live Search – often low numbers• Exalead – often low numbers, very good
relevance• Picsearch - lower numbers, often higher
relevance• For all, often very little overlap among the first
10-20 items
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Major Image Search SitesSearch Features
• Google – size, file type, coloration, site/domain, safe
• Yahoo- size, coloration, site/domain, safe
• Ask.com – narrowing suggestions
• Live Search – size, safe
• Exalead – size, filetype, coloration, layout,
• Picsearch - size, images/animations, coloration
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Images- Searching Flickr
• Can search everyone’s photos, your photos, groups, Flickr members, or by location
• Can browse by month, category (groups from multiple photographers, sets from individual photographers)
• Can search for group names• Advanced Search – Click on the Search
button itself, then Advanced Search
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Searching for Audio
• Audio found on web pages
• Podcasts
• Music
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Audio from Webpages -Search Engines
• Old Timers – AltaVista and AllTheWeb
• Yahoo Audio Search
• Exalead
• AOL Audio Search
• Internet Archive – Audio Archive
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Yahoo! PropertiesATW, AV, Yahoo Audio
• AllTheWeb and AltaVista audio search still there and different from Yahoo! Audio.
• All three yield different number of results and different rankings.
• Yahoo is more current and has better displayed results
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Yahoo! Audio Search
• Over 50 million audio files, including music, newscasts, interviews, speeches, podcasts, sound effects, e-books, and other audio.
• Enter terms (subject, artist, album, etc.) in the search box.
• Options on the results pages for narrowing down by Music, Podcasts, or Other Audio.
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Exalead Audio Search
• Do a regular Web search then narrow to audio
• Results very clearly displayed and browsable
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AOL Audio Search
• Incorporates the former Singingfish search
• Narrow results by TV, Music, News, Radio
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Internet Archive – Audio Archive
• 133,000 audio recordings -Mostly music, but some spoken word.
• 38,000 recordings of live concerts• Contains a section for Open Source
Audio, which is primarily Creative Commons material.
• Narrow by 11 categories – Audio Books & Poetry, Live Music, Grateful Dead, etc.
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Searching for Audio –Podcasts
• Lots of places• Yahoo! Audio Search covers podcasts
and incorporates capability of greatly enhanced metadata using RSS enclosures
• Yahoo! Audio – Do an audio search and narrow results to Podcasts
• Some of the others – Podscope, PodSpider, Podzinger, iTunes
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Searching for Audio –Podcasts
• Podscope – indexes the spoken word• Podspider - Searches the podcast title and
description – over 7,000 podcasts• Podzinger – Also allows a search of YouTube
(but not nearly as well as YouTube itself does)• Podcast.net – Can search
title/descriptions/keywords of either the show or the individual episode- over 10,000 podcasts
• iTunes- Under the Store section of iTunes click search and then click the Podcasts tab.
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Searching for Audio –Music
• Again, lots of places, especially online music stores – iTunes, eMusic, Rhapsody, Napster, etc.
• Yahoo! Music Unlimited provides “comparison shopping” for over 20 stores.
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Searching for Video
• More and more searchability due to technology applications: voice recognition, enhanced metadata using RSS enclosures, etc.
• As with other media formats, searches provided by both the big engines and specialty sites
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Searching for Video
• Major general search engines – Google, Yahoo, Live, Exalead, AOL (Ask on the way).
• Google, Yahoo and AOL allow you to upload your own video
• Specialty sites for TV
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Searching for VideoGoogle Video
• Archived TV programs, educational videos, personal productions, etc. - “online video marketplace”
• Viewing some videos may require a fee• All content is stored on either Google Video or
YouTube• Will (eventually) search the closed captioning and
transcripts.• Allows submitters to add a transcript when videos
are submitted to Google.• Advanced Search - language, duration, price,
genre.
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Searching for Video -Yahoo! Video
• Gathers indexing material from crawling and from metadata provided directly by suppliers by using Yahoo!’s Media RSS Feed technology.
• Advanced Video Search - Format, Duration, Domain, SafeSearch.
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Searching for Video -AOL Video
• Some content for purchase
• Contains “legitimate” clips from news services
• For many videos, extensive information provided as pop-ups on results pages
• On results pages, can narrow by: Show, and sort by Rank (popularity and ratings)
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Searching for Video -YouTube
• Searchability – terms automatically ANDed, can use OR and a minus sign for NOT
• Title, description and tags are searched
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Searching for TV Video –TVEyes
• Radio and TV search• Fee-based• Indexes audio feeds (speech-
recognition)• Provides searchable archives and alerts• Coverage of stations in the UK,
Canada, Australia, and the US.
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Searching for TV Video –Shadow TV
• Fee-based TV monitoring / news clipping service• Monitors over 120 stations including all major US
networks, cable stations and local affiliates • Closed captioning is searchable and readable• Video available within minutes of broadcast• Archives 4 years of content• Search by keywords and date/time, using an
extensive collection of operators (AND, OR, NOT, NEAR , soundex, stemming, fuzzy, wildcards)
• Keyword alerts – instantly or every 30 minutes
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Searching for TV Video –BlinxTV
• Searches primarily TV, but some radio.• 7 million hours of video• Free• Creates transcripts using speech-
recognition and video analysis, also uses added metadata
• Can search keywords and use Boolean.• Can rank by degrees of date/relevance.• “Conceptual” search is also incorporated
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Summary
• Be aware of the range of tools
• For a single search, using more than one tool will pay
• Look for search quality to improve as the technologies are implemented on a larger scale
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Links for all sites covered here are at:
onstrat.com/mmsearch.html
Ran [email protected] Strategieswww.onstrat.com