Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Pluggd.com, a podcast directory web site, showed off its HearHere search software at DEMOfall 2006. This technology allows listeners to search the content of a podcast and jump to a specific part of the program that matches their search.

Users just have to type in a keyword in the search box, and HearHere will display a map to indicate where in the podcast the content is likely to match a request. It also displays the related words HearHere is using to make its matching decision. For instance, if you type “PGA” in a search of ESPN podcasts, HearHere might indicate that it’s using “golf” or “Tiger Woods” to find what you’re looking for.

Here is a demo of the HearHere technology.

HearHere reminds me of PODZINGER, a podcast search engine developed by BBN Technologies. While both HearHere and PODZINGER exploit speech recognition software to map speech to search-able texts, I wonder exactly how their “magic tricks” differs under the hood?

News about HearHear was also covered by TechCruch.

North Korean officials told a US scholar that their country plans to unload nuclear fuel rods from one of its nuclear reactor by the year end, and the purpose is “to obtain more plutonium for nuclear weapons“.

Selig Harrison, the US scholar who was in touch with the North Korean officials, said the new move by the North Korean government is aimed at urging the US to enter a bilateral talk with the country.

To the best of my knowledge, the current US administration continues to refuse a bilateral talk between the North Korean government and the US, and it wants a six-party talk.

While I think a six-party talk is a better option, which gives the US and another parties more bargaining power in trying to convince the North Korean government to give up its nuclear weapon program. However, I think this nuclear weapon issue is growing to become critical problem that will not only impact the security of the local regions but also the national security of the US.

Should the North Korea is allowed to produce more nuclear weapons, it may try to sell those weapons to terrorist countries and groups to support its country’s troubled economy and social systems. If weapons were gotten into the hands of the underground groups, the US would have a much hard job to track and protect the country from what maybe terrorist attacks.

Regardless of whether the US plans to accept a bilateral talk or not, in general, I think the current US foreign policy is not working.

The latest statistics show the World Internet penetration is now at 16% — that’s about 1,032,580,000 Internet users if we do the math.

• In terms of % of the Internet users, the US continues to be #1 (68% of its whole population).
• During 2000-2005, there is a rapid Internet usage growth in Middle East (454.2%), Africa (423.9%), Latin America (350.5%) and Asia (232.8%).

You can read more about this subject at Read/Write Web.

“There is basically at least one Chinese equivalent for every single US web2.0 service“, says Benjamin Joffe, CEO of Asian Internet consultancy. I’m quite surprised. Since I live in the US and use web sites that are mostly in English, I don’t have much knowledge about the popular web sites in the Chinese market.

Here are few interesting observations about the Chinese startup market from Read/Write Web.

• Chinese startups often copy the Silicon Valley model. Sometimes, according to an expert, they are copycats even without any change. No surprise here!
• Mergers and acquisitions are rare in China. I think that this is because the Chinese IT market is still relatively young comparing to the US market. Most companies are still in their early stage of business development, trying to figure out how to make profits and survive. Consolidations and buyouts probably don’t make much sense to many of them.
• Foreign companies find it difficult to compete in China. Since Chinese culture and its government polices are great different from which of the US, what works in the US may not work in China. For example, the biggest search engine in China is Baidu, and not Google.

I think it will take some time before we see any China-based web startups to make big impacts in a global market, given the lacking of innovation and its disability to compete in an English language dominated web sphere. Nevertheless, Chinese web users should benefit greatly from the booming of Chinese web startups.

Among those Chinese web startups mentioned, my all time favorite is eDuShi.