blinkx Looks to Make Search Automatic
blinkx on Tuesday introduced Pico, a one-megabyte download that would automatically search for information based on what is on the user's screen. The company says the product revolutionizes the search process by continuously analyzing screen content.
Modern Web searching is a disruptive process, where a user must stop what he or she is doing to search for information. With blinkx, the company says it is turning "the search paradigm on its head."
"While others, including Microsoft and Apple, have talked about the potential of implicit search before, blinkx has once again pre-empted others by making it reality first," blinkx CTO Suranga Chandratillake said in a statement. "More than anything else, Pico is about the possibility of search-less search."
A channel bar would appear at the top of the screen, comprised of several different search areas: news, blogs, video, Web, Wikipedia, images, shopping, and people. The people channel would search through online communities, including the popular MySpace.com.
The user would click on the channel button to see results from that particular vertical. Additionally, the program allows for the creation of Smart Folders, which could save search results of a particular topic.
There is no charge for the program, however blinkx plans to generate revenue by placing advertisements at the bottom of search results.
In addition to Pico, blinkx had already been offering video and podcast search using contextual search technology.