blinkx-powered BBC Democracy Live is Short-listed for MediaGuardian Innovation Award

blinkx-powered BBC Democracy Live is Short-listed for MediaGuardian Innovation Award

Nomination recognises BBC portal's use of sophisticated search technology to make political debates more accessible

SAN FRANCISCO, March 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- BBC Democracy Live has been short-listed for a MediaGuardian Innovation Award 2010 (Megas). The BBC website, which offers live and on-demand video coverage of the UK's national political institutions and the European Parliament, has been recognised in the Use of Web Platforms category. The platform powered by blinkx, the world's largest video search engine, boasts sophisticated search technology that allows viewers to pinpoint the exact moment of a debate that is of interest to them with its audio, text and visual search capabilities.

Now in their third year, the prestigious Megas rewards all that is brightest and best across the media and new media landscapes. blinkx's ground-breaking video search technology sits at the heart of BBC Democracy Live and is one of the key drivers in making parliamentary discussions more accessible. Launched in November 2009, BBC Democracy Live takes raw coverage of Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the European Parliament and presents it consistently, attractively, and in a way that encourages understanding and participation.

"It is a real privilege to be able to add to such an interesting and worthwhile project," said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO of blinkx. "It is also a fantastic demonstration of how powerful blinkx's video search technology is. Not only can it analyse the audio in a video and recognize what is being said regardless of the speaker's accent, it is a multi-lingual video search technology that even provides the speech to text functionality in Welsh."

By making politics more accessible, BBC Democracy Live is proving very popular with users, and has garnered extremely positive feedback from audiences expressing their appreciation on Facebook and Twitter.

Adopting a holistic approach to video search, blinkx's technology utilises every characteristic of a video to understand the content. Using speech-to-text technology it analyses the soundtrack, through advanced video analytics it is able to recognise the images on screen, and blinkx is also able to read other information embedded into the file.

About blinkx

blinkx plc (LSE AIM: BLNX) is the world's largest and most advanced video search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 35 million hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on demand. blinkx's founders set out to solve a significant challenge - as TV and user-generated content on the Web explode, keyword-based search technologies only scratch the surface. blinkx's patented search technologies listen to - and even see - the Web, helping users enjoy a breadth and accuracy of search results not available elsewhere. In addition, blinkx powers the video search for many of the world's most frequented sites. blinkx is based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at www.blinkx.com.

Source: blinkx

CONTACT: Tim Turpin of Sparkpr, +1-415-321-1894, tim.turpin@sparkpr.com;
or Nicole Love of Marlin PR, +44 207 869 8328, Nicole.love@marlinpr.com, both
for blinkx, or NOMAD, Charles Lytle of Citi

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

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