Podscope Promises to Index Entire Spoken Podcast Universe

 Podscope, a search engine that indexes the spoken audio content of podcasts, has announced that it plans to "cover all non-music audio and video podcasts by August 31, 2005".

Podscope crawls the web, looking for podcasts, and creates an index against each spoken word, thereby making the contents searchable. The user can search on a term, generate a list of results ranked by a variety of methods to find the most relevant podcast and click to play or click to download.

Podscope says that it currently indexes more than 20,000 podcasts from more than 3,500 sites and is on track to cover every known podcaster by the end of August. Site owners can submit their sites for indexing at the Podscope site.

"Imagine how less useful a Google search would be if Google only indexed the title of the Web pages it returns for a search. It just wouldn't have the same value as search that includes the entire content of the textual Web. Such simplistic search is what's being provided by every other audio and video search on the Internet, with the exception of Podscope," said David J. Ives, president and chief executive officer of TVEyes, Inc., whose technology and company are behind Podscope.

"Indexing the spoken word using advanced speech recognition technology has a profound impact on a consumer's ability to get the most out of audio and video search on the Internet," said Allen Weiner, research vice president at Gartner. "Relying only on metadata search or categorical listings provides incomplete results, making it difficult and inefficient to find specific content you'd like to listen to or watch."

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Replay Music Review

 At a glance

• Release date: May 19, 2004
• Editors' rating: 7.5 Very good
• Editor's take: Replay Music is a useful tool for streaming audio enthusiasts.
• The good: Splits streaming music into individual tracks; automatically tags most songs with artist and title; recordings sound excellent.
• The bad: Must repurchase program after 5,000-song limit is reached; won't tag consecutive songs from different albums; can't use interface to stop playing individual tracks.
• What's it for: Intelligently recording streaming audio and discovering new music.
• Who's it for: Anyone with a streaming audio subscription and an MP3 player.
• Essential extras: A subscription to a streaming audio service, such as Musicmatch, Rhapsody, or Streamwaves.
• The bottom line: If you subscribe to a streaming audio service and want the music in your permanent collection, Replay Music is a sound investment.

When it comes to music on the Internet, you have two legal choices: you can stream tracks, or you can purchase them as individual downloads, most of which are protected with DRM. But what if you prefer to have tunes in your permanent collection, and your MP3 player doesn't support protected music files? Fortunately, Applian Technologies, makers of programs for recording and editing streaming music, has a solution: Replay Music. This app records and splits audio tracks coming through your PC's sound card. Regrettably, the $30 price tag gets you 5,000 recordings rather than unlimited use.

Installing Replay Music couldn't be easier, and once it's ready to go, you're rewarded with a simple, attractive interface. The program is straightforward, featuring just six control buttons--Start/Stop Recording, Reset, Edit Track(s), Delete Track(s), Play Track(s), and Burn Track(s) to CD--and a settings menu. Our one gripe with the interface is that there's no function to stop playback; you have to close the program to accomplish this.

The settings menu is basic. You can select the input source, designate the minimum amount of silence to split tracks, set the minimum length for songs to record, decide what volume level will be considered silence, and choose to save files as either MP3s (with a choice of bit rates from 128Kbps to 320Kbps) or WAVs or burn them directly to a data or audio CD.

Replay Music recognizes most songs and will identify them by the time the recording is finished.

Aside from its ability to automatically split streaming tracks, Replay Music's most notable feature is automatic tagging, which adds track titles and the artist's name to songs that you're recording. We found that the program recognizes most songs and will tag them appropriately, with one caveat: The tagging feature works only when you're recording songs from the same album. If you're streaming a self-created playlist, you'll have to label the files yourself. iPod users will appreciate the Add Tracks To iTunes option, which is self-explanatory and handy for syncing with the player later.

We were impressed with Replay Music's performance. While we streamed albums with Streamwaves and Musicmatch, the program identified and tagged everything we recorded, even obscure albums, and never had a problem splitting tracks. Better yet, and unlike other music recorders we've seen, Replay Music automatically shuts out alert sounds from programs such as Microsoft Outlook and instant-messaging applications, so you won't end up with random noises in the middle of a song. In fact, we didn't notice any bugginess in the interface, and recorded songs sounded fantastic (we were streaming at CD quality). Do note that when you're recording a stream, you are re-encoding a digital audio file; therefore, sound quality won't be as good when you encode a CD, for example.

Applian's Replay Music site offers a user guide and FAQ pages, including one that specifically addresses the legality of the program. It also has an e-mail contact form for support questions. A query that we sent from an anonymous e-mail address was answered within two hours.

User comments

Ratings from 4 users

User rating

Spectacular

9

out of 10

Great for Services like Rhapsody
by awesomegolfman - June 8, 2005

Pros:

Easy to use, good price

Cons:

Some song names not recognized, once in a while records have "skips"

User rating

Spectacular

9

out of 10

Awsome, Unlimited MP3 Recording from Streamed Sources
by gmcalmo - May 22, 2005

Pros:

Seamless recording of streaming audio, saved to disk as separate file with complete MP3 Tag. A great and ligitimate way to build your music collection.

Cons:

Sometimes confuses individual tracks but provides for easy editor to fix when required.

User rating

Spectacular

9

out of 10

Excellent software - make sure you get version 2.0 !
by cliven - March 7, 2005

Pros:

Version 2.0 allows UNLIMITED recordings at no extra cost. Works well with high quality audio streaming subscription services

Cons:

Requires me to re-adjust my audio setting after use if I need to use microphone for voice calls.

User rating

Mediocre

4

out of 10

lack of wow quality
February 2, 2005

Pros:

gets around recording problems on the pc

Cons:

expensive for just 5000 recordings. This fact alone is VERY understated on their website. They offer you commission if you gain lots of users for them. I just am not excited enough to bother and the interface sure needs a lick of paint

1 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

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