StreamSage has rolled out CampaignSearch- an audio/video search engine for content from political sources like C-Span, PBS, WhiteHouse, Washington Post, BBC, NPR, AP, Bush and Kerry's respective campaign websites, etc... The search functionality is excellent. And it's easy to link within the stream because StreamSage provides both a link to a relevant excerpt as well as the whole file. For example, I searched for "mccain vice president." Here's the relevant audio (link: Real Media Audio File). Here's what StreamSage says about their system- from CampaignSearch.com:

How does it work?

StreamSage's Audio/Video Search Engine listens to and watches the audio/video content to determine what topics are discussed and where they are discussed within the media file. By automatically understanding the information presented in the audio/video content, StreamSage's Audio/Video Search Engine is able to automatically generate "Relevance Intervals" that encapsulate all of the contextually relevant information about a given topic in the audio/video content. Additionally, by employing contextual understanding, StreamSage's Audio/Video Search Engine ranks search results according to the degree of relevance to the search term. This contextual relevance ranking allows users faster access to relevant information.

More from Ed Gubbins, via KeepMedia (reg. required) (2/1/04): “The system has built up this tremendously large understanding of how topics are related to each other,” said Seth Murray, StreamSage's 28-year-old president. “It's read years and years of the New York Times, medical text books, journal articles. So if you're doing a search on the Knicks, it knows Patrick Ewing and basketball are all related to that.”

NASA and Harvard Medical School use StreamSage for their lectures. National Public Radio uses it for their program archives. But although Murray has spoken briefly with wireless carrier execs who are considering their own content delivery initiatives, none have become customers yet. Though the Washington, D.C., startup hasn't targeted the mobile industry yet, Murray sees vast possibilities for commercial and consumer uses there. For example, if people could use their cell phones to scan the news for topics of interest, they could improve their drive-time news experience while eating up more mobile minutes. Over time, StreamSage could learn what subjects interest each user and tailor their content accordingly. (Think of it as TiVo for your cell phone.)

“That's the brilliance of the system,” Murray said. Unlike most of us, “it really listens.”