To be Googled, or not to be Googled? That was the question facing National Public Radio's online director Maria Thomas earlier this year. The answer would seem obvious for anyone doing business on the Web, where being included in search results can mean the difference between success and oblivion.
Indexing files by looking at their audio features is still a work in progress for big search engines, including Google. So NPR eventually hit on a plan to instantly turn audio broadcasts into text files that can be recognized and picked up by search engine spiders. Consumers armed with broadband connections at home are driving new demand for multimedia content and setting off a new wave of technology development among search engine companies eager to extend their empires from the static world of text to the dynamic realm of video and audio.
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News source: C|Net News.com
