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Video search has been a key topic at the TechCrunch50 show in San Francisco. Lots of newly launched companies presented (kind of like DEMO minus the payola). In a “rich media” grouping of companies, the proverbial challenge of making images and video searchable kept coming up.

Presenting companies were
• VideoSurf: video search
• GazoPa: image search
• Fotonauts: image search
• Bojam: online music collaboration (like garage band in the cloud)

On the panel of judges was Bradley Horowitz who was a key part of Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr back in 2005. Now he in charge of Google Gadgets and recently oversaw the integration of facial recognition software in Picassa.

“For a number of years I worked at MIT on image recognition technology and the first time I saw Flickr, I wanted to rip up my diploma,” he said from the stage. “It turns out humans are very good at this. You don’t need a hyper-technical solution. It can sometimes be the activity around the video, not the content in the video that defines relevance.

This point underscores many of the companies walking different lines between algorithmic solutions and user interaction/tagging in order to solve this longstanding indexing issue.

For the sake brevity, I’ll just talk about the best one I saw — San Mateo, Calif based video search engine VideoSurf. CEO Lior Delgo agrees that users should be brought into the mix but asserts that relying on this alone is flawed.

The company still got Horowitz’ vote for its underlying technology, which includes a great deal of intellectual property around visual recognition. This is paired with some social features that together make it a viable choice for video search over and above existing engines like Truveo and Blinkx.

The technology essentially goes beyond the voice recognition, meta data, and surrounding content that many existing sites rely on, and instead tags each frame with more granular information. This includes character names in popular shows and other things that are more contextually relevant and likely as search terms. Relevancy is weighed on frequency of these keywords, click throughs and a few other factors.

This could also be the right time for this technology, given the expanding corpus of video being brought online. This isn’t just the long tail YouTube ranks but head content that will get more search queries such as network shows on sites like Hulu. Lots more to the nuts and bolts, and it’s clear video search will continue to be a tough nut to crack. But this will be one to watch.

I hope to dive deeper in a column later this month on this and the many other search related companies here — including a social network for bird watchers (seriously).

Video search was a key topic at the TechCrunch50 show in San Francisco this week. Lots of newly launched companies have presented (kind of like DEMO minus the payola). In a “rich media” grouping of companies, the proverbial challenge of making images and video searchable kept coming up.

Presenting companies were
• VideoSurf: video search
• GazoPa: image search
• Fotonauts: image search
• Bojam: online music collaboration (like garage band in the cloud)

On the panel of judges was Bradley Horowitz who was a key part of Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr back in 2005. Now he in charge of Google Gadgets and recently oversaw the integration of facial recognition software in Picassa.

“For a number of years I worked at MIT on image recognition technology and the first time I saw Flickr, I wanted to rip up my diploma,” he said from the stage. “It turns out humans are very good at this. You don’t need a hyper-technical solution. It can sometimes be the activity around the video, not the content in the video that defines relevance.

This point underscores many of the companies walking different lines between algorithmic solutions and user interaction/tagging in order to solve this longstanding indexing issue.

For the sake brevity, I’ll just talk about the best one I saw — San Mateo, Calif based video search engine VideoSurf. CEO Lior Delgo agrees that users should be brought into the mix but asserts that relying on this alone is flawed.

The company still got Horowitz’ vote for its underlying technology, which includes a great deal of intellectual property around visual recognition. This is paired with some social features that together make it a viable choice for video search over and above existing engines like Truveo and Blinkx.

The technology essentially goes beyond the voice recognition, meta data, and surrounding content that many existing sites rely on, and instead tags each frame with more granular information. This includes character names in popular shows and other things that are more contextually relevant and likely as search terms. Relevancy is weighed on frequency of these keywords, click throughs and a few other factors.

This could also be the right time for this technology, given the expanding corpus of video being brought online. This isn’t just the long tail YouTube ranks but head content that will get more search queries such as network shows on sites like Hulu. Lots more to the nuts and bolts, and it’s clear video search will continue to be a tough nut to crack. But this will be one to watch.

I hope to dive deeper in a column later this month on this and the many other search related companies at the show — including a social network for bird watchers (seriously).

If the popularity of Facebook fansites was an indicator of how Londoners will vote on May 1st then Boris would be a clear winner with 7466 supporters whilst Ken and Brian trail behind with 2152 and 2130 respectively. Thankfully it seems that Londoners will vote with their feet rather than faces but latest results from a social media study reveal that online PR strategies could count for something in the electoral race.

Nielsen Online revealed today that London Mayoral candidates Ken and Boris are top of the blogs, dominating 80% of the social media conversation. Liberal Democratic candidate Brian Paddick is third with 9% of comments, followed by the Green Party’s Sian Berry with just under 4% and the BNP’s Richard Barnbrook with 2%.

According to Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst from Nielsen Online, Londoners penchant for social networking continues to thrive and users are taking their opinions mainly to non-political forums, blogs & message boards including those of national newspapers and sites like Twitter and Facebook.

“Ken and Boris are the two leading candidates, neck and neck in the polls and the levels of conversation in the social media space utterly reflect this. If conversation levels were a guide, Ken would narrowly pip Boris to win. However, it’s when we look at the sentiment of these conversations that a far more interesting and revealing picture emerges.”

Controversy, positivity, negativity: sentiment towards the five leading candidates in social media

• Controversy: Boris is the ‘marmite’ candidate – being the most likely of the top five to generate some form of opinion either way. Only 30% of posts relating to him were of ‘no opinion’

The Green Party’s Sian Berry generates the least controversy / most apathy – having the highest percentage (54%) of ‘no opinion’ posts

• Positivity: Whilst Boris is most likely to generate positive sentiment, 29% of posts being ‘positive’ – Sian Berry had the highest overall ‘net’ positive score of 15% (positive sentiment % minus negative sentiment %). Brian Paddick is the only other candidate to come out with a ‘net’ positive score (11%)

• Negativity: Richard Barnbrook is most likely to generate negative sentiment, 38% of posts being ‘negative’. He also had the lowest overall ‘net’ positive score of -19%

Indeed Nielsen’s results seem to suggest that, shock horror, actually participating in blogs, forums and social media is effective in helping other people to form opinions on issues that affect them. The most active candidates online garnered a net positive score in total comments posted on social media sites. Brian Paddick employed a web ace, signed up to twitter, where he hosted a policy debate and also broadcasted himself via uStream.tv.

“Of the three leading candidates in the polls it’s not surprising that Brian Paddick is the only one to have an overall positive sentiment score in social media. His campaign, involving a US web strategist firm, has focused the most heavily on social media including a pioneering British political use of sites like Twitter, Facebook and UStream.TV – and it certainly seems to have paid dividends.

However, judging from the sheer levels of social media conversation on the election, it may not be enough to grab victory over Boris or Ken. If social media were a crystal ball it might tell us Boris is likely to get more votes than Ken. However, positive comments on Boris more often centre on personality rather than policies and only time will tell if this is a strong enough factor for voters when faced with putting the cross in his box to change the status quo.”

So, positivity is not the cure for apathy and clearly Londoners like myself, vis-a-vis this post, whether online or on the underground, don’t know what we really really want but we sure do love a good rant!

On yesterday’s earnings call, Chris Liddell, Senior VP and CFO, affirmed recent statements by Steve Ballmer to focus on the online advertising market. He said that the strategy was based on three pillars:

• To drive innovation and search
• To increase value to advertisers and publishers
• To grow user engagement across MSN and Windows Live properties

Liddell said that Yahoo would accelerate that strategy. But later, he made this statement:

We’ve yet to see tangible evidence that our bid substantially undervalues the company. In fact we see the opposite.

Yahoo continues to lose search share and profitability continues to decline year-on-year. The results that they announced on Tuesday were in line with the guidance that they gave on their last earnings call on January 29, after which their stock price closes at $19.05 and Wall Street analysts’ consensus on value was significantly decreased.

Just how is Microsoft expected to accomplish their three pillars if Yahoo is as awful as they say?

Perhaps Liddell and Ballmer are beginning to ponder that exact question. Earlier this week, Ballmer suggested that Microsoft would go forward without a merger. During yesterday’s call, Liddell suggested that an alternative to Yahoo’s “no” is to withdraw the proposal.

Meanwhile, Yahoo remained consistent in what they’ve been saying all along – that they’re worth more than Microsoft’s original offer. Speaking on Yahoo’s earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Jerry Yang reinforced his confidence in the overall value of his company:

Yahoo! has a unique and valuable combination of assets that include our global brand, our large worldwide audience, our leadership in online advertising, our strategic positions in Asia, our mobile and emerging market franchises, and our scales, tools, and technology.

Yang stated that Yahoo’s Q1 revenues were particularly remarkable in the light of uncertainty caused by Microsoft’s unsolicited offer. He also said that Yahoo remains open to its options, including a deal with Microsoft.

Then Yang zeroed in on what he felt was his most important statement on the matter:

If you take only one thing away from this brief discussion, I hope it will be that our board and management are committed to choosing a path to maximize stockholder value and will not enter into any transaction that does not recognize the full value of this company.

Tomorrow, the ultimatum comes. Decisions will be made and actions will be taken. But the rhetoric still has just begun.

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SpiralFrog.com, an ad supported Web site that allows users to download music and videos for free has launched in North America.

"Music fans demand fast access to high quality audio and video files and they want their music free, but they’d still like the music owners to be paid for their work and creativity," said Joe [...]