When it comes to video search, there’s this little bitty problem that comes up when you’re doing,say, a YouTube search, to pick a name out of the blue. Or maybe not so blue, but anyway. Say you’re looking for videos involving, oh I don’t know…Al Franken, that lovable comedian and possible senator who’s ahead by a whopping 50 votes in Minnesota following a recount of several million.

Try a search for Al Franken on any of the mainstream video searchers. You’ll find some videos that have Al Franken in them, but you’ll also find some news clips that talk about Al but don’t have him in the video, and you’ll even find videos of disgruntled Minnesota voters who don’t like Al Franken and want to declare this to the world by launching their own Anti-Al YouTube channel or something. Or you’ll find Al Franken diehards who love the recount and have launched their own YouTube channel in protest of the other guys. But those, unfortunately, don’t actually have Al in them, either. Just angry people ranting and raving. Or hysterical happy people. Or sometimes just weird people. (This is not a criticism of YouTube itself, but rather it’s internal search capabilities. Just keep that in mind.)

Enter VideoSurf.

As we mentioned in our previous VideoSurf post, the technology behind the innovation searches the actual video rather than text surrounding it. Their newest feature, even cooler, is designed to look for and recognize faces within the images. Point being, if you search for a video with the words “Al Franken” you’ll find videos that actually feature Al himself! How? Because VideoSurf “knows” his face. Craziness.

This comes in especially useful in my case, and my test actually impressed me. Specifically, I have become interested in a man named Moshe Feiglin, an Israeli political figure who is quite controversial. A YouTube search for videos actually featuring him gets annoying, because most of the videos only make oblique references, or show cartoons of him as the roadrunner being chased by Wile E. Coyote, in this case Benjamin Netanyahu. Annoying. I want to see him actually speaking, so I can decide how controversial he actually is. I want to educate myself, not watch cartoons.

So I go to VideoSurf, and type in Moshe Feiglin. And I am overwhelmed by the number of videos (all of them) that actually have him IN THE VIDEO. Thanks VideoSurf!

What fun Fruit Roll-ups® will they roll out with next?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Reviews, Verticals, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.