E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Quintura Now on to Visualise Video Search – Where Is the Limit?

(Previously, on elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog, at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Quintura, Blinkx, Search Engines, Search 2.0, Knowledge Tools, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Content Management, Google, Visualisation, Video, Video Search

You may remember how there have been a few times that I have been talking in both of my Internet weblogs about one particular search engine that, as time goes by, I am really starting to be very fond of: Quintura. Yes, that is right! I know that most people out there would say that why should you bother with other search engines when you have got Google, the one and only, right? Well, I have said this in the past, and I guess I will be saying it as well once more: just because of that very same reason. Because it is always a good thing to check out things from the other side and see if they would still stick together for you.

In my own case, Google doesn’t stick together as much as I would be hoping for. There are times where I am looking for something a bit more innovative than just another regular search engine and in that particular case I have got a bunch of dedicated innovative search engines that I have grown to become very fond of. One of such pack is Quintura and by the looks of it, I am not sure what you think, but it seems that things are getting even better. And not just for Quintura.

You probably have seen this already elsewhere, but still I think it would be a good thing to include it over here as well for the sake of the flow from this weblog entry. A couple of days ago I got an e-mail from Yakov where he was announcing that Quintura and Blinkx are to Visualise Video Search. Now, how cool is that? Or, better, how innovative is that? *Very*. Well, here is an excerpt of the announcement:

"Blinkx, the largest video search engine on the Web, has announced that Quintura, a visual discovery engine dedicated to finding web-based entertainment easier and more intuitive, will use blinkx to power video search on www.Quintura.com.

Quintura employs a unique graphical user interface with an interactive tag cloud to visually navigate and easily refine searches. Quintura’s neural networking technology discovers related search terms to the initial query and presents those terms as the interactive tag cloud. Users can then refine or narrow down their searches by clicking on any word or phrase in the cloud.

Under the terms of the agreement, blinkx will power a video search functionality on www.Quintura.com, allowing Quintura to leverage results from blinkx’s index of over 7 million hours of rich media content."

Are here you have got a couple of quotes from both parties involved:

""blinkx’s large video index is a perfect compliment to our graphical user interface,"said Yakov Sadchikov, CEO and Founder of Quintura. "As the Web becomes more visual and rich with content, people are looking for better ways to find video online. blinkx’s video search index combined with Quintura’s visual discovery engine provides users with a unique search experience. This new service has become possible due to technology innovations of our companies in visualizing search and indexing online video."

"We are excited to be powering video search for Quintura," said Suranga Chandratillake, CTO and Founder of blinkx. "Through blinkx’s advanced speech recognition technology, we are able to deliver better results than typical rich media search engines, giving Quintura users the ability to find, experience and share all forms of online video.""

Yes, indeed, I will say it again. How innovative is that? In an Internet world where more and more rich media is being produced all over the place there is a time where you probably need to step away from conventional search engines to still be able to find all of that social media content, because there is probably a time where you would need to watch that video or find that important presentation recorded in video format, or watch that particular screencast on how a particular tool works and so forth, and perhaps there may be certain search engines not apt for the job.

Well, definitely both Quintura and Blinkx are not having that problem, because this particular announcement is certainly going to help them become a whole lot more attractive from the perspective of being able to not only provide the right content at the right time, but also from a wider range of social media tools, which is, after all, what we are all probably looking for. A single point of entry where we can search for any kind of related content to the topics we are interested in. And both Quintura and Blinkx certainly do a great job in that, I tell you.

I know that in the past I have not been weblogging much about Blinkx, but I have still been using it quite extensively all of the place, because otherwise where do you think am I getting all of the different inspiring videos I have been sharing all along And certainly now with the joint work put together between Quintura and Blinkx things are going to get easy, way *too easy*, to find all of the content you would be interested in the first place. That is for sure.

This is just what innovation is all about and in an area that you probably thought it was all done and invented, right? Well, not quite. Here you have got two interesting players showing us all that we may not have reached the limit just yet…

Lotus Notes 8 Demo – A Whole Lot More than Just Another E-Mail Client

Tags: IBM, Connections, Quickr, Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Notes 8, Notes 8, Groupware, Screencasts, Demos, e-mail, Calendaring and Scheduling, Instant Messaging, Activity Centric Computing, Composite Applications, Mashups, Syndication, Newsfeeds, RSS, Atom, Integration, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration

It looks like the last couple of days I have just been posting about particular screencasts that have become available regarding IBM offerings that are in the pipeline to go live some time during the course of this year and which touch the realm of knowledge sharing and collaboration. So far I have been posting about Lotus Connections, then Lotus Quickr and it looks like I may well have one more for you. At least, for now. This time around on another offering that I have been making use of myself for a number of months and which some of you may find interesting as well, specially since it is something that I have covered over here already in the past and which I mentioned I would be digging into it further some more.

Yes, I am talking about the next version of Lotus Notes 8, currently in beta 2, and which will go live some time during the course of this year. Not far from where we are today, actually. Going along with the previously mentioned screencasts on Connections and Quickr here you have got another screencast on the subject of Lotus Notes 8. It lasts for a bit under six minutes. And pretty much like with the other two, you can download the demo directly from here or get a copy of the script over here as well. It is one of those demos that I would certainly recommend to all those folks out there who would want to see the word groupware reinvented, once again. Whether you like the application or not, this particular screencast will show you what Notes 8 has got to offer. Lots of things, you would agree with me, but if there is anything clear coming out of it is the fact that it is no longer just that e-mail client that people seem to have learned to love or hate.

It will be a whole lot more than that. Yes, it would allow you to still process and work with your mail, and implementing a lovely set of features for that, too, by the way, but the key thing is how Notes 8 is going to extend its reach into other areas to encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration both in a synchronous and asynchronous fashion.

In this particular demo you would then be able to find out a whole lot more about how the new Lotus Notes integrates plenty improved e-mail, calendaring & scheduling capabilities along with Instant Messaging, next to Activity Centric Computing and Composite Applications. Features like improved threaded discussion follow up, side preview, recalling messages that have been sent out already, etc. are now put together with sidebar applications, like Lotus Sametime 7.5.1, Activity Centric Computing, Quickr Content Libraries or a customised RSS / Atom feed client that you can use to subscribe to your favourite feeds.

You would also be able to see from that screencast how Lotus Notes 8 provides an enhanced calendaring feature that, if anything, will be noticed for its compatibility with other popular Internet calendaring formats. From there onwards, you would also be able to check how the Address Book has been improved tremendously with business cards where you can see the pictures of your contacts along with some key basic data, making it a lot easier to remember who you have worked with in the recent past.

And from there onwards we go into the most exciting part of the demo itself which is basically talking about Composite Applications, also known as mashups, and how Notes 8 is actually going to introduce them as part of the client itself. In this particular demo you would be able to see a concrete example of one mashup and how it has been put together into the Notes 8 client itself. This is certainly going to be one of the most popular features from this offering as it would allow end-users to create their own mashups within Notes and share them with whoever else in the project teams. And all of that without having to make use of any other application. Pretty nifty.

Finally, the screencast finishes off sharing some further details on how you can also access Office applications like a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation to be able not only to create your own Office documents, but also to process a wide range of files you may be receiving in your Inbox from other knowledge workers. And again without having to leave the Notes client. All of them are nicely put together into a single seamless experience. Quite handy, if you ask me, don’t you think?

So, there you go. The last weblog post on screencasts demoing IBM tools that I will be doing for a while and which touch base on the next generation of Lotus Notes, Notes 8, which is probably going to differentiate itself from its former predecessors as the one client that puts together traditional communication tools like e-mail and calendaring along with several other social computing components, like RSS / Atom feeds syndication, Activities, Quickr, Composite Applications and Lotus Sametime 7.5.1.

Not too bad for just another e-mail client…