Contextual search for audio

For my money, one of the best demos of the show so far is Pluggd’s (that’s right, there’s no ‘e’ in the name) HearHere search technology for audio and soon video. Like PodZinger, Pluggd’s technology parses the audio stream and indexes the spoken word, allowing users to search from something like “New England Patriots”. What makes Pluggd standout is it’s “Heat Map” which shows exactly where your queried phrase is uttered, but also shows other warm areas where “football” or “NFL” is mentioned. Plus, as you roll your mouse over the Heat Map, it shows what terms it hit on that it thinks are related to your search, so you can see what’s happening without having to listen to it first. Plus, it’s going far deeper than metadata that is attached to a podcast or audio file. Very sweet! The company has a public version of the product on its Web site that it hopes will be come the Google of audio and video search. And it will also license the technology to content producers for use on their own sites.