Blinkx Better Bet for Video

For those whose response to Google Video was a shrug of the shoulders, a more advanced video search engine is out there. Blinkx, which debuted at the end of 2004, indexes more content and returns better quality results.

The London company says it searches the dialog and images within a stream to find matches to a search, technology that is also being developed by IBM and by a European group.

Blinkx has deals with the BBC Film Network, iFilm, NBC, ABC, and HBO, and last week agreed to index content from UKTV Ltd, the second largest multi-channel broadcaster in the UK. There's also a radio search, but the mostly British broadcasts makes for slim pickings. Like Google, the company also offers a desktop search utility.

While it's more likely that one of the major search engines (my bet is Yahoo!) will become the leading video search engine, surfers will flock to whatever offers the best quality. I would love to see a specialty search engine focusing on topical humor. Imagine if you could search "Abramoff" and get the latest musings from Kimmel, Letterman, Conan, Maher and The Daily Show together -- I'd never get any work done!