TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

BlinkX, Video Search, and the Corporate Shell Game

The Financial Times broke the news, but Mashable summed it up more succinctly: $20 and a free pony if you can figure this one out.

The demerger of the consumer business is a complex transaction, in which Autonomy will first take ownership of Blinkx, a separate company founded by Autonomy’s former US chief technology officer, Suranga Chandratillake, which already uses Autonomy’s consumer search technology. In exchange Blinkx will be given exclusive rights to the technology, everywhere outside China. Then the Blinkx business will be demerged again and floated. [From the FT article]

Sounds like an complicated way for Suranga Chandratillake to take a pay day while keeping shareholders happy. Or something.

Meanwhile, try using Blinkx. Personally, I found the search results from YouTube alone a lot better: less clutter in the results, more relevance.

BlinkX for “Nissan Skyline.”
YouTube for “Nissan Skyline.”

BlinkX results are full of a bunch of remote-controlled car stuff - not what I was looking for. Plus, the BlinkX interface, with preview videos playing unsolicited, video thumbnails, and so on, is distracting to the point of making the site painful to use - however technically impressive it may be. Say what you will about the aesthetics/usability of YouTube, but its better than BlinkX.

Finally, BlinkX doesn’t seem to be indexing YouTube properly either. The result sets from each don’t match, and I have no idea how BlinkX ranks video results from one site over another anyway. When it comes right down to it, BlinkX seems counter-intuitive, dis-organized, and a confusing way to find video. This is the fate I fear for CastTV.