I came across a pretty cool search engine the other day called PodZinger. It’s a searching engine that scours the web looking for podcasts and then transcribes the file so it’s searchable by keyword.

BBN Technologies developed PodZinger capitalising on their 30-year history of speech recognition technology. Apparently this is the same technology used by the CIA and special agent Jack Bauer.

Even if you’re not trying foil terrorist plans, PodZinger is still useful to search podcasts that mention specific words or phrases i.e. searching for “digital convergence”. When you select a search result, PodZinger dynamically creates markers cued up to where that search phrase was mentioned.

PodZinger also allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds, so you can automatically download new podcasts that contain your search phrase.

And finally, PodZinger can now search the contents of YouTube videos.

Check it out at: http://www.podzinger.com/

Tim Fouhy, Managing Director

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

As most people in the world should know by now, Microsoft has finally released their latest operating system, Vista. So is it worth the hype, has anything really changed and is there any point in upgrading?

Vista definitely needs higher spec hardware. When you install Vista, it gives your PC a Windows Experience rating out of 5.9. Scores are given to Processor speed, Memory (RAM), Graphics card (A rating for Aero and a rating for gaming), and Hard disk. Your PC is awarded the lowest score of each of these. My PC gets a 2.

The culprit contributing to my PC's low score is the graphics card and how it displays the Aero effect. This is the fancy transparency or mac (as some are quick to point out!) effect. I have just noticed that Vista has turned Aero off on my PC. I’m not sure when as I’ve only just noticed. I did notice that when Aero was active it was a lot slower to switch between windows.

So is it any different to use? Well yes and no, a lot of the things you are used to doing in XP are there and look very similar, however it can be a bit tiresome to find their new locations.

Some of the features I do like are:

• The breadcrumbs in windows explorer which enable you to jump back a directory easily.

• Vista seems a bit more proactive in detecting and fixing problems.
  

• You can have multiple clocks set up in different time zones.

• The ‘All Programs’ menu in the start menu now only opens in one vertical list which you can navigate with a vertical scroll bar.

• A whole array of new and equally meaningless error messages!

• I also have Office 2007 installed. The new ‘ribbon’ tool bars which change to suit what you are doing are really handy.

• There is no need for Google desktop anymore, when you click on the start menu there is a search box at bottom. When you type into the search box, the start menu is then replaced with the search results... from files you’ve opened, from your emails... you name it, just like Google desktop search.

A side note on drivers... apparently there were to be anticipated problems with hardware without drivers but so far I haven’t found that to be the case. Although I am yet to plug in my dodgy $5 bluetooth adapter...

All in all, I like Vista and the overall experience has been positive. If you’re a techno geek and love new toys, then upgrade. If you are okay with the status quo, then there is no compelling reason to spend the money, just wait till you have to buy a new PC.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to go back.

Mark Moynihan, Systems Administrator

Labels: Technology