Most search engines rely on publishers of Web video to provide terms that make their videos searchable. Publishers will usually apply "metatags" to videos, such as "olympics," "Jon Stewart," or "Dishwasher repair" so they can be found. But not all publishers take this step, while others intentionally mislabel their videos in order to maximize hits. So some search engines are now debuting new, better ways to search videos. For example, VideoSurf is using technology that can search the actual content of the video, and YouTube is developing speech-recognition technology that can be used to search the actual words spoken in …

Talk about a battle of the bands. Activision, which makes "Guitar Hero," and MTV-Harmonix, which makes "Rock Band," have for years been engaged in a war for exclusivity with some of the world's all-time greatest musicians in an effort to build the ultimate set lists for their respective music-based video games. But the big catch, The Beatles, have long lay unclaimed. Until now, that is. In one of the biggest coups of the digital music era, MTV has won the rights to include Beatles music in its "Rock Band" game. But this is about more than gaming: This is …

What would your ideal PC look like, and what would it do? Would it have endless memory, staggeringly high-definition resolution and lightning-fast Internet access, or come in bright pink and play Jonas Brothers records every time you get reboot? Well now you can tell Intel what you want, and maybe your wishes will come true. Intel has teamed up with IT firm ASUS and ad network Federated Media Publishing to launch WePC.com, where the public can go and share their ideas for the perfect PC, and vote on others' ideas. Sometime next year, Intel will review the entries and …

Never played a video game in your life? Have no idea what an Xbox or Wii is? Well watch out! You're just asking to be brought up on charges by a U.K. campaign to crack down on video game piracy. Such was the case with one elderly couple from Scotland, Gill and Ken Murdoch, who received a letter from Atari's law firm telling them they could pay 500 pounds for their crime of illegally downloading games or face criminal prosecution. "We do not have, and have never had, any computer game or sharing software," said the couple. "We did …

The latest iteration of Microsoft's "I'm a PC" campaign has a new star: you. New ads featuring user-generated videos of people declaring "I'm a PC" have hit the airwaves, and more are to come. Anyone is invited to visit Microsoft.com and upload their videos for inclusion in future ads. The user-generated bid is the latest phase of a $300 million campaign from MDC's Crispin Porter & Bogusky, which is largely focused on responding to Apple's hugely popular spots featuring an uptight, nerdy John Hodgman declaring "I'm a PC." The campaign originally featured Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates in bizarre …

Although they probably didn't like each other much when they first met, Kevin Bermeister, formerly of peer-to-peer file-sharing service Kazaa, and Michael Speck, once the head of the Australian Music Industry Piracy Investigation, have teamed up to help persuade would-be file pirates to become legitimate paying customers of the music industry. The two met as courtroom adversaries -- Speck was helping sue Bermeister for his involvement with Kazaa -- but are now partners in a joint venture, Brilliant Digital Entertainment, which is preparing a product that can intercept online piracy. The product will work at the ISP level, and …

Anyone in the U.K. searching for music from Johnny Cash yesterday was in for a surprise. Ditto anyone looking for Jimi Hendrix's "Long Hot Summer Night," Queen's "Killer Queen" or any sing containing the word "lesbian," though none come to mind right now. A glitch in the U.K.'s iTunes censorship software yesterday caused perfectly inoffensive song titles and artist names to be partially replaced by asterisks. Affected words include "hot," "Johnny," "Killer," and "lesbian." And while files from The Pussycat Dolls were unaffected, good luck finding "I Thought I Saw a Pussy Cat," by Danny Kaye. An Apple …

With the boatloads of money funneled to search marketing in recent years, one might not think academic proof was required to convince advertisers that search is where they should put their dollars. But according to WPP Group and Google, you would be wrong. The two companies are teaming up to provide grants to academic research to show how search marketing benefits brands. The $4.6 million joint project, funded equally by the companies, will run three years, with about a dozen grants expected in the first year alone. "The aim is to make us smarter, our clients smarter and …