SAN FRANCISCO, February 5 /PRNewswire/ --

- Video Search Leader Enhances Site with New Tools to Allow You to 
Explore and Discover Online TV and Video Using Speech, Facial and Concept 
Recognition

blinkx, the world's largest video search engine, today unveiled new
functionality that puts all of its powerful technologies at the fingertips of
users, unlocking new ways for users to search, explore and discover video on
the Internet.

Over the past several years, as Web video has experienced tremendous
growth, the quality and diversity of content has evolved significantly.
Faster, more accessible broadband access is changing the way that people
enjoy video online: watching video on the Web is no longer purely a "lean
forward" experience driven by search; it has become closer to the TV
experience, with users increasingly interested in casually surfing for video,
or simply sitting back and watching.

In response to this shift in consumer behavior, blinkx is unveiling a new
homepage featuring "Entertain Me", "Inform Me" and "Give Me My Own Channel"
buttons to offer users a better browsing experience, in addition to the most
advanced video search technology on the Web. Leveraging patented concept
clustering technology, blinkx identifies the most popular entertainment clips
and the most important news stories from across the Web to automatically
create playlists for the respective buttons, so users can sit back and enjoy
the video, delivered as a channel directly to their computers. Alternatively,
by clicking on "More Information" at the bottom right-hand corner of the
player, users can choose to explore the videos more actively, leveraging
blinkx's patented speech, image, facial and concept recognition technology to
guide their browsing.

"Every day, millions of people come to blinkx.com with a specific search
in mind - looking for a particular program or video clip," said Suranga
Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx. "But increasingly, we're seeing our
audience use our site more like a TV: people want to sit back and be
entertained, or use the information blinkx can generate about a video to
guide their browsing experience. With our new homepage, we're offering a more
enriched viewing experience for the Web's vast array of video content."

The new blinkx.com site allows users to select "Inform me" for a roundup
of the top news stories, "Entertain Me" for the most popular viral video, or
"Give Me" to create a personalized channel. They can then choose either to
watch the content in a linear way as a channel, or click "More Information"
in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, to tap into the full power of
blinkx's search technology. Selecting "More Information" reveals the
following unique functionalities:

- Speech tags: leveraging patented speech and concept recognition
      software, blinkx technology listens to the speech track of a given 
      video, identifying and extracting speech tags that represent key words 
      and phrases spoken within the video. These tags complement text 
      metadata tags, improving the description of the video and lighting up 
      as the corresponding words are spoken in the video. The speech tags can 
      be used to navigate - both within the video, allowing users to jump 
      directly to the point in a video that a word is spoken, and also from 
      the video, as a starting point to find other relevant videos. For 
      example, a video about President Barack Obama's inauguration might 
      include speech tags such as  "Barack Obama," "oath" and "Lincoln 
      Bible". If a user were interested in learning more about the history of 
      the Lincoln Bible, he could click on the speech tag to retrieve and 
      explore more videos about the subject.

    - Facial recognition: using its unique visual analysis capabilities,
      blinkx automatically identifies and catalogs recognizable faces within a
      video. In the example of a clip of the inauguration of President Barack
      Obama, users would be presented with thumbnails of the different faces 
      that appear in the video, including the President, the former President 
      and the Chief Justice of the United States. If interested in a 
      particular person in the video, users can simply click on the relevant 
      face to jump directly to the scene that features that individual.

    - Scene change analysis: by watching each video frame-by-frame, blinkx
      can detect scene changes and match videos that share similar visual
      components. For example, news videos on the presidential inauguration 
      might come from different television networks, but if they share 
      similar scenes from the event, then blinkx presents the videos as a set       
      of related results. In addition, the scenes of each video are shown as 
      a storyboard, allowing a user to track, visually, where they are within 
      a video - these scenes can also be used as chapter anchor points, by 
      clicking on one, the user is taken directly to that scene.



With the addition of these new browsing options, blinkx now offers users
the most effective, interesting way to search, discover and explore online
video - from news to entertainment to their favorite TV shows - all through a
single destination. Visit www.blinkx.com to start watching now.

As the pioneer in video search technology, blinkx has built a reputation
as the smartest way to search new forms of online content such as video. With
more than 420 partners and 32 million hours of indexed video and audio
content, including favorite TV moments, news clips, short documentaries,
music videos, video blogs and more, blinkx uses advanced speech-recognition
technology to deliver results that are more accurate and reliable than
standard metadata-based keyword searches.

About blinkx

blinkx plc (LSE AIM: BLNX) is the world's largest and most advanced video
search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 32 million hours of audio,
video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on
demand. blinkx's founders set out to solve a significant challenge - as TV
and user-generated content on the Web explode, keyword-based search
technologies only scratch the surface. blinkx's patented search technologies
listen to - and even see - the Web, helping users enjoy a breadth and
accuracy of search results not available elsewhere. In addition, blinkx
powers the video search for many of the world's most frequented sites. blinkx
is based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at
www.blinkx.com.