Introducing the Veoh Video Compass

January 25th, 2009 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Verticals, Video | No Comments »

veoh_logo

Veoh, the world’s most comprehensive Internet Television service, just launched the Veoh Video Compass, a new browser add-on that transforms Web video from an entertainment-centric activity into an indispensable tool that enhances everything users do online — whether they’re searching, shopping, finding a date or catching up on the latest news.

Currently available in beta at www.veoh.com/videocompass, the Veoh Video Compass™ lives on a user’s Web browser and instantly provides a panel of relevant online video recommendations that complement the topic or page on which the user is searching or browsing. For example, if a user is searching or browsing for a video game on Amazon.com, the Veoh Video Compass™ will automatically surface related video reviews, video tips from fellow gamers, and other valuable information, allowing them to watch those videos right on that page, without ever having to navigate to a dedicated video site. These video recommendations, which are tailored based on the viewing behavior of millions of online video users, make it easy to find videos you may have forgotten about, watch things you didn’t know existed, or uncover something new — wherever you are online.

“Online video is not just about entertainment, and it’s not tied to a single destination – video should be a core element of everything people do online,” said Dmitry Shapiro, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Veoh Networks, Inc. “By extending video content beyond the typical web video environment and into users’ daily lives online, Veoh is unlocking the full potential of online video for both consumers and advertisers.”
compass

Key features of the Veoh Video Compass™ include:

* Enhanced Search Experience: The Veoh Video Compass™ operates on every major search engine and other popular sites — including Google, Yahoo!, MSNLive, YouTube, eBay and Ask.com – to provide users with relevant, complementary video results from Veoh’s vast collection of online videos. These results include videos from the more than 100,000 publishers who host their content on Veoh, as well as Veoh’s partners like CBS, Viacom and WB.

* Recommendations While Browsing: Beginning with popular sites like Amazon, Best Buy, WalMart, Wikipedia, and IMDB.com, the Veoh Video Compass™ will not only recommend videos when a user is searching but also will also recommend videos if available while they are browsing a specific page.

* On-Site Playback: Videos that the Veoh Video Compass™ recommends can be watched instantly within the Compass environment wherever they are searching or browsing. This gives users the flexibility to enhance their daily online activities with web video without ever having to leave the page.

* Related Search Terms: In addition to surfacing relevant videos, the Veoh Video Compass™ also generates a list of search terms that are related to the topic a user searching for or to the page a user is browsing. For example, if you are searching for or viewing content about President Obama, the Veoh Video Compass™ lets you know that people who’ve searched for Obama have also searched for John McCain, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and “Yes We Can.”

In conjunction with the Veoh Video Compass™, Veoh is also launching a newly redesigned Veoh.com, which features easier navigation, new video playback experiences and more powerful video recommendations. The new Veoh.com also offers “Browse While Watch,” which allows users to easily browse for other videos while you have a video playing, and allows users to help Veoh tune its recommendations by telling Veoh what their video interests are. In addition, the most popular videos hosted on Veoh.com are now easily accessible on the iPhone — simply type “Veoh.com” into the iPhone’s Safari browser and access Veoh’s new iPhone-enabled site.

Truevert Semantic Search Parts I & II

January 25th, 2009 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Green, Semantic, Verticals | 1 Comment »

iwk_blog_logo_2009by Fritz Nelson

Here is Part 1 of our video discussion with Truevert, including a demonstration.

Here’s Part 2, where we discuss competitors (namely Powerset, now owned by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)) and the nature of other ontological approaches to semantic search.

Your can read the entire article by Fritz Nelson at the InformationWeek blog here.

Travel Search Engine Tripwolf Raises Funds

January 25th, 2009 by Guest Author
Posted in Travel, Verticals | No Comments »

tripwolf-logo

An exciting message from travel search engine Tripwolf:

Great news tripwolfers — we won’t be going anywhere any time soon!!

MairDumont has invested for the second time and we are also very happy to have Dieter von Holtzbrinck as a new investor.

Great things are going to happen in 2009 at tripwolf:

- Our iPhone application will be launched soon (currently we have a beta version). It will contain comprehensive travel content on all the world’s destinations, most of it from professional travel guide books, plus user generated content. The cool thing: You will be able to synch your personalized choice of destinations online so that you can then have all the information available offline when you are traveling (avoiding roaming charges overseas).

- We are actively working on our launches in French, Spanish and Italian. We will be releasing one new language version every quarter this year, starting with French.

And don’t forget to check out the story Tech Crunch wrote about us! Tripwolf Raises Another $2.5 Million For Its Online Travel Guide

Have a great weekend!

Maria / tripwolf

*Actually we read about it over at The Next Web Blog.