Pluggd, Woz, and seven minutes of Flock

Uncategorized 2 Minutes

Ever want to look into a podcast, er, netcast without listening to it? Well, Pluggd.com is your service. I visted them today and they crawl the Web looking for audio (and soon video) content, like Leo Laporte’s TWiT program. Then they index it, convert the speech in it to text strings (not full text, but enough text so you can do searches on what was discussed).

This is cool cause then you can see where, say, Tiger Woods was discussed, in a sports podcast without listening to the whole thing. Get a demo of the HearHere technology I saw today. I can’t wait until they do this for video.

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Woz (co-founder of Apple) was lots of fun tonight, had more than an hour of asking him lots of stories about his experiences at Apple and other things. Even talked about his love of Tetris, laser pointers, and the new US Festival that he’s planning for next year. The interview I did with him was the eighth speech he did today alone. Damn that guy has a lot of energy. I got three of his very collectable metalic business cards. I have more than 1,400 business cards and his is definitely the coolest. It’s all metal and etched out. He told me that someone sold one on eBay for more than $500. I’m not selling mine, though. They totally rock and I’ll treasure mine forever.

I did videotape the interview. Well, actually David Geller, CEO of What Counts, ran my camera while I was on stage. He did a good job, but the audio was a bit overdriven (not his fault, that’s what came off the sound equipment). I’ll still get the video up sometime soon cause even though the audio isn’t perfect it’s still a good Woz speech (one of the book tour planners said it was her favorite of the past two days that she’s been listening to). I wish I could get the video up faster but it takes time to encode, and edit, and I don’t have a machine on the road capable of doing it.

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Nicole is taking my wife to Ikea? Oh, great, I can smell more funky stuff for me to put together. What did I do? I leave Maryam alone for a few days and now she’s taking Nicole to Ikea. Help! Heheh. Hey, Nicole, have the Swedish Meatballs, they are my favorite thing to get at Ikea.

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Ever wonder what the big deal about Flock (new browser) is? Well, here you can see one of the co-founders giving a seven minute demo of it and showing you the coolest features of the latest version. I love a good demo, and this one is great. I’m the monkey running the camera, filmed this for the ScobleShow. I thought the demo idea would be stupid, but I like how these are coming out. What do you think?

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

Published

54 thoughts on “Pluggd, Woz, and seven minutes of Flock”

  1. Pluggd : only one sample demo, hmmm. Let’s test random audio files before jumping to conclusions…

    Like

  2. Pluggd : only one sample demo, hmmm. Let’s test random audio files before jumping to conclusions…

    Like

  3. ikea?! sweden ftw! 🙂 by the way, here in swe we now have a foreign minister who blogs. bildt.blogspot.com.

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  4. ikea?! sweden ftw! 🙂 by the way, here in swe we now have a foreign minister who blogs. bildt.blogspot.com.

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  7. I’m reading Woz’s new book “Iwoz” right now. It is written as if he is actually talking to you, which is quite engaging. The only down side is that for some reason I “hear” his voice in the book and it sounds like the John Candy character’s voice from the movie Heavy Metal (you know, the geek who became super powerful). So I’m going through these stories about the early days of computers and I thinking of the guy from Heavy Metal who smashed a bunch of bad guys and flew around on a giant dragonfly. It’s a bit strange.

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  8. I’m reading Woz’s new book “Iwoz” right now. It is written as if he is actually talking to you, which is quite engaging. The only down side is that for some reason I “hear” his voice in the book and it sounds like the John Candy character’s voice from the movie Heavy Metal (you know, the geek who became super powerful). So I’m going through these stories about the early days of computers and I thinking of the guy from Heavy Metal who smashed a bunch of bad guys and flew around on a giant dragonfly. It’s a bit strange.

    Like

  9. Pingback: Flock continues to impress « Protos’ Musings

  10. How would you say Pluggd compares to Podzinger http://www.podzinger.com/ ? I’m just delighted that podcast audios are beginning to be searchable, and would imagine that thing’ll improve over time, and I’ll be able to find audio content as easily as I can now find text content.

    Like

  11. How would you say Pluggd compares to Podzinger http://www.podzinger.com/ ? I’m just delighted that podcast audios are beginning to be searchable, and would imagine that thing’ll improve over time, and I’ll be able to find audio content as easily as I can now find text content.

    Like

  14. Robert, get a MacBook Pro, the 15″ and use that as your video processing system. It’s more than capable of encoding video on the road, esp. if you get Final Cut Express, which gives you a few more options than iMovie. You probably could do it with iMovie, but I think you’d hit the ceiling on that pretty quick.

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  15. Robert, get a MacBook Pro, the 15″ and use that as your video processing system. It’s more than capable of encoding video on the road, esp. if you get Final Cut Express, which gives you a few more options than iMovie. You probably could do it with iMovie, but I think you’d hit the ceiling on that pretty quick.

    Like

  16. Pingback: New Model Media » Pluggd offers new audio search service

  17. Oh, and what’s with the .Mov files? Why piss off potential Linux viewers that much? Use MPEG-4. You get good quality, good compression ability, and you make the videos far more accessable to all.

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  18. Oh, and what’s with the .Mov files? Why piss off potential Linux viewers that much? Use MPEG-4. You get good quality, good compression ability, and you make the videos far more accessable to all.

    Like

  19. Thanks so much for getting me and Dave in for Woz. It’s always cool to see interviews that are with really creative people. It was fun to hear Dave try to describe stuff to his girlfriend when we went out afterward. I think she said something like, “Isn’t he that blogger guy.” Hehe… Now, you’re the celeb!

    Like

  20. Thanks so much for getting me and Dave in for Woz. It’s always cool to see interviews that are with really creative people. It was fun to hear Dave try to describe stuff to his girlfriend when we went out afterward. I think she said something like, “Isn’t he that blogger guy.” Hehe… Now, you’re the celeb!

    Like

  21. Robert,

    Thanks for a wonderful job with Woz last night. I was there with my son and Woz was amoung the most interesting, kind, and gracious people I have ever met.

    Woz provided for me, as a proud father, a lifelong memory for my son (his card and picture that we four all took together) for which I will be forever grateful.

    Like

  22. Robert,

    Thanks for a wonderful job with Woz last night. I was there with my son and Woz was amoung the most interesting, kind, and gracious people I have ever met.

    Woz provided for me, as a proud father, a lifelong memory for my son (his card and picture that we four all took together) for which I will be forever grateful.

    Like

  23. Pingback: Wespennest » Blog Archive » Scoble features Flock

  24. As the CEO of Pluggd, I wanted to address a few of the HearHere comments specifically.

    HearHere is a technical preview. It is all running code and not a canned demo.

    At the DEMO conference and in the press release on our website we stated that HearHere will be available by the end of the year.

    HearHere is not about speech recognition. People aren’t really listening to a particular word. That is annoying like walking into the middle of a conversation and not really understanding what people are talking about.

    HearHere utilizes speech recognition and a means to an end, combining it with semantic analysis so that people can find the whole conversation as represented by a keyword even if the keyword itself isn’t used in the segment of audio/video.

    Like

  25. As the CEO of Pluggd, I wanted to address a few of the HearHere comments specifically.

    HearHere is a technical preview. It is all running code and not a canned demo.

    At the DEMO conference and in the press release on our website we stated that HearHere will be available by the end of the year.

    HearHere is not about speech recognition. People aren’t really listening to a particular word. That is annoying like walking into the middle of a conversation and not really understanding what people are talking about.

    HearHere utilizes speech recognition and a means to an end, combining it with semantic analysis so that people can find the whole conversation as represented by a keyword even if the keyword itself isn’t used in the segment of audio/video.

    Like

  26. Alex, providing text transcript for an arbitrary audio or video podcast seems as much valuable. I would certainly by such service to save me time and quickly scan a piece of text rather than having to listen or watch an entire podcast only to know it was not worth it.

    Sure, the text transcript would be a derivate work of the media files, thus would be subject to copyright laws. Yet, I am pretty sure there are ways to mitigate the issue.

    Just a thought.

    Like

  27. Alex, providing text transcript for an arbitrary audio or video podcast seems as much valuable. I would certainly by such service to save me time and quickly scan a piece of text rather than having to listen or watch an entire podcast only to know it was not worth it.

    Sure, the text transcript would be a derivate work of the media files, thus would be subject to copyright laws. Yet, I am pretty sure there are ways to mitigate the issue.

    Just a thought.

    Like

  28. Thank you for the tickets to see the interview last night! It is really appreciated. I’m still not sure what’s cooler…Meeting Robert Scoble or seeing the Woz!

    Thanks again!

    Like

  29. Thank you for the tickets to see the interview last night! It is really appreciated. I’m still not sure what’s cooler…Meeting Robert Scoble or seeing the Woz!

    Thanks again!

    Like

  30. Shouldn’t your current tax bracket put you beyond having to shop at IKEA? Unless you are shopping for your newlywed apt or college dorm room, why the hell shop at IKEA? 🙂

    Like

  31. Shouldn’t your current tax bracket put you beyond having to shop at IKEA? Unless you are shopping for your newlywed apt or college dorm room, why the hell shop at IKEA? 🙂

    Like

  32. The meatballs. 😉 But yeah, IKEA has that college-dorm, starter-house, feel about it, but it has some choice things here and there, and has great baragins off and on. Plus it runs a tad exotic, beyond the mushed sawdust style of other Walmartizationals. Tho I do ever so like some of Target’s designerish deco pieces. Can’t hold a candle to Hobby Lobby, but still…

    Woz still hanging onto his 15 minutes forever…thankfully only the geeks cultic worship him.

    Flock really should just be a Firefox plugin…

    Pluggd.com? You guys do know that Lawyers and Court Reporters have had audio to transcription software since the dawn of time, yes? Some via all the Wizzard offerings. So it’s not something to pay attention to until some Web 2.0 service narrowcast targets it? Heck, even in the consumer space, you have ViaVoice, Dragon, Bytescribe, Wave to Text…and on and on.

    http://www.filesland.com/companies/United-Research-Labs/Wave-To-Text.html

    Like

  33. The meatballs. 😉 But yeah, IKEA has that college-dorm, starter-house, feel about it, but it has some choice things here and there, and has great baragins off and on. Plus it runs a tad exotic, beyond the mushed sawdust style of other Walmartizationals. Tho I do ever so like some of Target’s designerish deco pieces. Can’t hold a candle to Hobby Lobby, but still…

    Woz still hanging onto his 15 minutes forever…thankfully only the geeks cultic worship him.

    Flock really should just be a Firefox plugin…

    Pluggd.com? You guys do know that Lawyers and Court Reporters have had audio to transcription software since the dawn of time, yes? Some via all the Wizzard offerings. So it’s not something to pay attention to until some Web 2.0 service narrowcast targets it? Heck, even in the consumer space, you have ViaVoice, Dragon, Bytescribe, Wave to Text…and on and on.

    http://www.filesland.com/companies/United-Research-Labs/Wave-To-Text.html

    Like

  34. Scoble, seriously, your blog is getting less and less interesting and more and more narcissitic. Can a day go buy without you name dropping, telling us how someone told how awesome some random video you did is? Without you tell us how you work so so so damn hard and are so so so far behind in email, or whatever? It’s getting more and more tedious and boring. The posts are basically the same, only name dropping and the work related whine is different.

    And like Chris says, you do understand there is very little new under the sun in the “industry” you are in, right? Unbelieveable that someone at your level in this business is so out of touch with the tools necessary to produce even a high school level production. Hell, Spielburg’s Super 8 videos he did in high school are better than the quality of stuff PodTech is producing. And this is what Seagate expects to pay for?

    Like

  35. Scoble, seriously, your blog is getting less and less interesting and more and more narcissitic. Can a day go buy without you name dropping, telling us how someone told how awesome some random video you did is? Without you tell us how you work so so so damn hard and are so so so far behind in email, or whatever? It’s getting more and more tedious and boring. The posts are basically the same, only name dropping and the work related whine is different.

    And like Chris says, you do understand there is very little new under the sun in the “industry” you are in, right? Unbelieveable that someone at your level in this business is so out of touch with the tools necessary to produce even a high school level production. Hell, Spielburg’s Super 8 videos he did in high school are better than the quality of stuff PodTech is producing. And this is what Seagate expects to pay for?

    Like

  40. Sir, Could you please check those business cards in the hold baggage along with your fingernail clippers?
    Thanks DHS

    Like

  41. Sir, Could you please check those business cards in the hold baggage along with your fingernail clippers?
    Thanks DHS

    Like

  42. ChrisCoul, all this stuff you refer to requires a training stage. To be able to extract an accurate transcript from an arbitrary audio (or video) would be unheard of.

    Like

  43. ChrisCoul, all this stuff you refer to requires a training stage. To be able to extract an accurate transcript from an arbitrary audio (or video) would be unheard of.

    Like

  44. Hrmpf. Next time she is in Germany I have to take her to a real, full fledge Ikea! This one was a disgrace and especially the food servings where sooooo bad! No decent chocolate nor Hotdogs 🙂

    I will have to check next time I come over again if they have gotten better. 🙂

    Like

  45. Hrmpf. Next time she is in Germany I have to take her to a real, full fledge Ikea! This one was a disgrace and especially the food servings where sooooo bad! No decent chocolate nor Hotdogs 🙂

    I will have to check next time I come over again if they have gotten better. 🙂

    Like

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