New Resource for Expert Rich Media Content
Sonic Foundry wants to share the wealth. They've just launched Mediasite.com (www.mediasite.com),
a searchable Web site that aggregates publicly available expert presentations
from higher education, government, and corporate sectors. The idea is to link
individuals to a growing database of expert rich media content. Debuting with
more than 7,000 titles, the collection is based on, but not limited to, presentations
that were recorded using Sonic Foundry's Mediasite recording technology. It includes
topics ranging from the treatment of contagious diseases and general health-related
issues to robotics, business start-ups, sociology, ethics, financial advice, and
career advancement-a wide variety of both technical and general-interest topics.
"Since we launched the Mediasite rich media communications technology
just three years ago, customers around the world have been capturing thousands
of hours of presentations for corporate, education, government, and public information
use," says Rimas Buinevicius, chairman and CEO of Sonic Foundry. "Mediasite.com
is the first step in bringing all of the publicly available presentations to
the public through a single aggregated, searchable source."
The site is based on free, on-demand access and uses a free Mediasite viewer
window and the freely available Windows Media Player for viewing presentations.
A simple search window and pull-down category menu allows users to narrow their
search with keywords from presenter-defined metadata.
Mediasite.com will grow with both user submissions and presentations identified
by Sonic Foundry's Web crawler. The system tests for completeness and technical
quality, throwing out fragmented or broken presentations. Sonic Foundry plans
to evolve the site based on user feedback, and is already considering ways to
improve the search function and categorization of presentations.
Screenshot courtesy Sonic Foundry
