The Podscope logo looks familiar (the listening head on the site, not the logo I've posted here), but I don't recall the name. I suspect Podscope started life as something else and has morphed, but I'm not sure.
In any event, Podscope is a search engine for podcasts. Unlike a typical search engine, however, Podscope "listens" to each show, runs a speech to text converter on it, and then indexes the results. What this means to you and I is that we can type in a word or phrase and Podscope will return a list of podcasts containing that phrase. Even better, there is a little play button beside each search result which, when pressed, will play the specific portion of the podcast that contains that word.
I tried it and it actually works. It even works on multiple hits in that it will show the occurrence of each instance of the search word beside the search result.
It's very effective. And a little eerie.
These audio search services are improving and this process is going to be a major factor in driving podcasts front and centre in research. Not just academic research, but everything from travel destinations, hotel recommendations, restaurant reviews and whatever else people talk about on their podcasts. It's important for the genre that services like this continue to improve and become more useful.
Give it a whirl or add your own podcast to the engine.
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Podzinger is an alternative. It even supports video.
The company has just received $5m investment from its parent company BBN Technologies, Inc.
Really, this is just too exciting.
Posted by: Hendry at Podcasting Scout | August 20, 2006 10:33 AM | Permalink to Comment