We’ve been posting a number of articles about podcast searching lately. In fact, yesterday I pointed out that Podscope was now offering keyword RSS feeds. That post also included a link to a recent Wired article that discussed Podzinger, Blinkx, and Podscope. All of these services use voice/speech recognition technology to automatically create searchable transcripts. Today, Philipp points out CastingWords.com, (NOTE: the site is down at the moment, at least for me) a new service (not much there at the moment) that instead of using technology to transcribe podcasts will use human transcribers to get the job done. This will be an interesting one to watch and see the response. In other words, are people willing to pay for such a service.
Erick Schonfeld has more on the Business 2.0 blog. Both posts describe the “mechanical turk” nature of this service.
As you can probably figute out, using humans to transcribe broadcasts and other events is not a new idea. Companies including Morningside Partners (aka eMedia Millworks, aka Federal Document Clearinghouse) have been using human transcribers to transcribe government hearings, radio programs, television shows (work at home) for years. In fact, they even have some job openings.
Posctsctipt: On another matter. A big congrats to our friend and colleague, Philipp Lenssen, the Google Blogoscoped guy, on the launch of his new blog (and I think I’m busy) called: ChoiceBlogger.com. Each month visitors to the site with decide what Philipp blogs about.
Every month, there will be 5 fresh choices to choose from ? and every new month, I will exclusively write about what you decided on with your vote.