blinkx Takes ITN Across the Online Globe

blinkx Takes ITN Across the Online Globe

blinkx Partners With ITN, Launching Full-Service IPTV Platform blinkx.tv DirectPlay at www.blinkx.tv

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- blinkx, the smartest thing on the Web, today announces a partnership deal with ITN, one of the world's leading news producers. blinkx has been appointed to create and power the official ITN player, as well as make their news searchable through www.blinkx.tv.

ITN is the latest site to be added to blinkx's news and information line-up, already featuring Reuters, Business Week, Euro News and the New York Times. Users from around the world will be able to search over 80 clips from ITN per week, covering breaking national and international news, analysis and interviews on the day's stories and even daily showbiz news bulletins.

With a wide variety of news sources available online, consumers now have even more choice about where they find up-to-the-minute information. www.blinkx.tv -- the only search engine that is optimised for searching rich media content -- simplifies this choice by collecting video content from different news outlets, such as ITN, and making it fully searchable at a single destination. The blinkx technology creates footage transcripts and indexes this footage to deliver more accurate search results.

Nicholas Wheeler, Managing Director of ITN Multimedia, said: "ITN has always pioneered new and innovative ways to deliver its content and the blinkx platform is certainly an exciting new proposition that is really opening up the type of information that is searchable and available on the web.

"In an increasingly fragmented market, it's important that users can find high-quality, relevant content as easily as possible and blinkx helps do that. We are delighted that this deal with them will enable us to extend the reach of our news and entertainment content still further."

"blinkx is committed to providing users with quality content from a range of sources," said Federico Grosso, VP business development for Europe, blinkx. "ITN provides 24-hour news, seven days a week, so really gives users immediate and constant access to breaking stories in the UK and abroad. The channel is well-regarded and relied upon in the UK and thanks to the blinkx technology can now be searched by millions more users across the world."

ITN is the first blinkx partner to take advantage of blinkx.tv DirectPlay, allowing it to be linked to from both www.blinkx.tv's search results as well as www.ITN.co.uk. The site is funded by advertising.

More about blinkx.tv DirectPlay and Eyeblaster

blinkx.tv DirectPlay is based on blinkx's established and successful SelfCast platform that hosts and manages content from amateur content creators and vloggers. DirectPlay is an IPTV platform that provides content publishers with a single-stop solution to recording, encoding, hosting, streaming, distributing and monetizing television and video content on the internet. Utilizing blinkx's popular video search infrastructure that already offers over a million hours of content at www.blinkx.tv, DirectPlay records and encodes content in multiple formats. The content is then played back through branded video players that can be linked to from both www.blinkx.tv search results as well as content publisher sites. DirectPlay supports multiple delivery technologies including branded Flash-based players, a full screen playback mode, and off-line delivery options RSS, Atom and iTunes; DirectPlay partners can distribute their content directly to the Video iPod and other portable media players with fully-automatic, one-click synchronization.

In conjunction with the ITN agreement, blinkx has also entered into a partnership with the online rich media advertising specialist, Eyeblaster. Using the Eyeblaster Rich Media Platform, blinkx will now also insert advertising into all searchable ITN content; any revenue generated from this advertising will be shared by blinkx and ITN.

About blinkx

blinkx, the smartest thing on your computer and on the Web, is changing the way that people think about search. Only blinkx can harness the desktop, Web and TV -- unifying content with a one stop search tool. Available to users on the Web at www.blinkx.com and www.blinkx.tv, as well as free to download, blinkx automatically and intelligently links to content anywhere and in any format, on the Web, on the desktop and even on TV. blinkx's conceptual toolbar means users are no longer limited to keyword search; instead, blinkx assesses all the information that the user is actively viewing, and automatically recommends and retrieves relevant content, from local, Web and TV searches, based on context. In addition, www.blinkx.tv makes thousands of hours of TV content fully searchable and available on demand for the first time. blinkx is a privately-held company based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at www.blinkx.com.

About ITN

ITN is one of the world's leading news producers, providing news programming for the main commercial broadcasters in the UK and its combined news broadcasts reach over two-thirds of the UK population. The company has a strong reputation for the creative and innovative use of modern technology, winning the Royal Television Society's 2004 Innovation Award.

ITN is driving expansion in the fast-growing new business area of ITN Multimedia, where the company is established as the UK's leading supplier of news and other video entertainment content to 3G mobile phones. Key partners to ITN Multimedia are mobile operators such as Vodafone, 02 and 3 as well as established broadband operators yahoo! and MSN, and enterprising new companies such as Greengrass.tv. www.itn.co.uk

Source: blinkx

CONTACT: Julia Blystone of OutCast Communications, +1-415-392-8282, or
julia@outcastpr.com, for blinkx

Web Site: http://www.itn.co.uk/

Web Site: http://www.blinkx.com/

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