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Full-Text Audio Search

Posted by timothy on from the information-awareness dept.

Captain Chad writes "The latest print edition (12/16/2002) of InfoWorld has an interesting article about an audio search program by Fast-Talk Communications. (The article is not yet available on the InfoWorld web site, but the Fast-Talk site has some good info, including a downloadable trial version.) The product works by breaking the audio stream into phonemes, which are the 'basic units of sound in a language.' The search is then performed for a specific sequence of phonemes. This method is faster and far superior to traditional audio searches which convert to text and then perform a normal text search. The author of the Infoworld article, Jon Udell, tried a variety of searches that were surpisingly successful. If this technology is as good as he claims, there is a reasonable chance it will revolutionize the way we store data. Maybe there will even be an 'Audio' tab on Google." Here's the Infoworld article.

3 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Just one more step on the road to TIA by Grapes4Buddha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How long before the feds start digitizing all of our telephone conversations and using this technology to google our private conversations?

    Yay!

    1. Re:Just one more step on the road to TIA by m.lemur · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You think its not happening already?

  2. Imagine... by tjamme · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... Or imagine Google recording all possible audio streams (TV, radio, ... streets?) and allowing us to search those? All it takes is enough procesors, a bit of wiring...

    Now if you record street conversations or all types of public conversations... Do a search on 'bomb'... How appealing is that to big brother.

    All right... I'm learning sign language. Now.