blinkx Shines Spotlight on Mac Search
Next week, blinkx will publicly unveil a version of its blinkx 2.0 search tool for Mac OS X. The tool brings desktop search capabilities to the Mac platform ahead of Apple's upcoming "Tiger" operating system, which will have desktop search properties of its own called "Spotlight."
Instead of relying on traditional boolean keyword searches, the company claims that blinkx monitors and assesses the information that a user is actively viewing for context. The tool uses a technology dubbed Context Clustering Technology (CCT).
For instance, documents are probed for their meaning rather than specific keywords. Once information is collected, the software infers what is that the user wants to see and returns relevant results from local sources such as PDFs, ZIPs, music and images, as well as from the Web.
The software will also support Mac-specific applications including the Safari Web browser. blinkx refers to the technique as "implicit queries."
Another facet of the release 2.0 is the software's "Smart Folders" option. Smart folders are continually indexed for contextual information and updated and populated with new content including related documents stored on Macs, news articles from the Web, TV, radio or video clips.
Smart Folders can also be created by explicit user-defined keywords or phrases, or by selecting specific documents. Preview thumbnails provide visual snapshots of the suggested links.
"blinkx has delivered an innovative, easy-to-use approach to search that works very well with the Mac's own ease-of-use design," said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst, Creative Strategies.
Apple's upcoming Mac OS X version 10.4 includes an integrated metadata search engine called Spotlight. Spotlight offers on-the-fly search results for a variety of file formats and is placed prominently in the corner of the menu bar.
blinkx CEO, Mark Opzoomer was quick to draw the distinction between his company's product and Apple's Spotlight search technology. "Apple is known for bringing consumers cutting edge technology that is both elegant and intuitive, and we believe that blinkx delivers capabilities and a user experience which will make it a natural complement to Apple's new Tiger OS; Spotlight will index metadata in a revolutionary way, while blinkx tackles conceptual content."
Although many desktop search tools exist, blinkx is the first for the Mac platform. In the PC world, desktop search will soon be included in Windows Longhorn. In the meantime, Windows users can download a variety of tools from AOL, Google, MSN, and others.