Pluggd

A while back, I heard about Delve Networks, a Seattle based company which developed an audio search engine named Pluggd.  Pluggd scans audio and video podcasts for keywords and embeds them with searchable markers.  These searchable markers tag the individual words and subjects within an audio file.  The user can type any word or phrase into their search engine and instantly locate all podcasts with that word or phrase in it.  Pluggd will even highlight the exact location in each podcast where the phrase was spoken!

Yesterday I stumbled across an application named Utopy SpeechMiner.  SpeechMiner analyzes recorded conversations for keywords as well as emotion and organizes the results into a searchable database.  SpeechMiner was created as a tool for large scale statistical analasis of customer service phone calls.  The intent is to determine common issues and track customer satisfaction.  SpeechMiner also has an API that enables the software to be integrated into websites and other applications.  What I find most interesting, is that these speech analytics are being applied to phone conversations.

In a discussion with someone who used to work for the government about the recent warrantless wiretappings of american civilians by the NSA it was explained to me that the government has the capability of gathering and storing huge amounts of personal data but they have no idea what to do with it.  I maintain that if they haven’t already figured out the alchemy of changing vast quantities of data into usable information it’s only a matter of time before they do or someone else does it for them.