Transcript

Monday April 28, 2008

Google Researchers Present VisualRank

At the International World Wide Web conference in Beijing last week, Google researchers presented VisualRank, an algorithm for blending image-recognition software methods with techniques for weighting and ranking similar looking images. Google researchers aim to create a software technology advanced enough to do for digital images on the Web, what its original PageRank software did for searches of the Web, which return relevant results when a user conducts a search query. Similar to most commercial search engines, Google has until now only offered image results typically generated by text associated with the image.

http://www.news.com/A-Google-prototype-for-a-precision-image-search/2100-1038_3-6238367.html?tag=nefd.top
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/technology/28google.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/27/google-experiments-with-next-generation-image-search/
http://www.www2008.org/papers/fp506.html
http://www.www2008.org/papers/pdf/p307-jingA.pdf (.PDF file)
http://news.directtrafficmedia.co.uk/Google_precision_image_search_software_in_the_works_18569836.html

Chinese Video Web Site Tudou.com Raises $57 Million Funding

In December, new rules were adopted in China that required all video-streaming Web sites be owned or controlled by Chinese government entities. The agencies that issued the rules later clarified that they wouldn't apply to existing, privately owned video sites, so long as they could prove their content was in compliance with Chinese regulations. Pornography, violence and politically sensitive topics are among the content categories that China's government requires Web companies to censor. The newly enforced rules sparked concerns over the future of the online video sector in China, but in recent news Tudou.com, one of China's leading online video Web sites, raised $57 million in new venture investment, suggesting investors are still eager despite uncertainties. Online video is a growing industry in China, which by some estimates has the largest population of Internet users in the world, with more than 220 million. It remains to be seen if the Chinese government allows the budding private online video industry to develop in the country, if its rules will likely benefit China’s video sharing leaders by keeping new private sector companies such as Google’s YouTube from entering the playing field, or if regulation will halt its future all together.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120938376108549363.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042800388.html
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-chinese-video-site-tudou-receives-another-big-round-of-57-million/

[edited by: Vanessa_Zamora at 5:06 pm (utc) on April 28, 2008]