Podzinger indexes and finds podcast content

With podcasts exploding as a major media format it is hard to find good podcast content let alone the specific content you are interested in.

Now there are a number of sites that index podcasts such as podcast.net and ipodder.org but although they provide a subject index (usually based on the metadata associated with the podcast content) there hasn’t been, until recently, a way to “dig” deeper for specific words and phrases used.

A service that I predict will definitely change everything is Podzinger. Podzinger processes the actual audio data with a speech recognition engine from BBN Technologies (previously known as Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, those folks who made ARPANET, the grandfather of the Internet, happen). The result is a searchable index of all identifiable text in any submitted podcast.

Podzinger is just getting started but even so, its home page currently claims a total of almost 82,000 indexed podcasts.

You can submit your own podcasts through Podzinger’s submission system. Your podcasts will be analyzed, Podzinger claims, within 8 hours of submission. Once indexed Podzinger will send you an e-mail message with a block of HTML that you can put on your Web site so that your visitors can search your content.

And what about the podcast content that you want to find? Search on the Podzinger site and along the results will come a link that creates an RSS feed that you can reference at any time through your newsfeed reader to get an update. Amazing! What incredible forward thinking.

This is an outstanding service that has huge potential. If you are a consumer, this could well be a goldmine. If you are a podcast provider, this will make it much easy for your own podcasts to be easily found by your audience. If you are a venture capitalist, this is one to invest in.