Commentary

Hunting for Video

A Connecticut company has created what it hopes will one day be known as the equivalent of Yahoo for TV news video. Search engines have long made it easy to find newspaper or magazine articles on desired topics. But what about video?

Called TVEyes.com, the free site functions much like a traditional search engine, sifting through video on TV news Web sites. So far it’s limited to six sites, including FOXnews.com and CNN.com, but more are on the way. The site catalogs the spoken words in the videos —mostly interviews, features, and clips from the Web sites’ TV partners — making them searchable just as Yahoo would for text pages.

The goal is to eliminate long download times and unnecessary viewing while searching for something as specific as, say, talk show host Bill O’Reilly’s ranting against the liberal media’s coverage of Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident. Not surprisingly, a search for video a few days after the incident produced loads of results, ranging from a hospital update on the condition of the victim to a CNN report on the dangers of hunting.

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