blinkx Partners With ITN, Launching Full-Service IPTV Platform blinkx.tv

DirectPlay at www.blinkx.tv

    SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- blinkx, the smartest thing on the
 Web, today announces a partnership deal with ITN, one of the world's leading
 news producers.  blinkx has been appointed to create and power the official
 ITN player, as well as make their news searchable through www.blinkx.tv.
     ITN is the latest site to be added to blinkx's news and information
 line-up, already featuring Reuters, Business Week, Euro News and the New York
 Times. Users from around the world will be able to search over 80 clips from
 ITN per week, covering breaking national and international news, analysis and
 interviews on the day's stories and even daily showbiz news bulletins.
     With a wide variety of news sources available online, consumers now have
 even more choice about where they find up-to-the-minute information.
 www.blinkx.tv -- the only search engine that is optimised for searching rich
 media content -- simplifies this choice by collecting video content from
 different news outlets, such as ITN, and making it fully searchable at a
 single destination.  The blinkx technology creates footage transcripts and
 indexes this footage to deliver more accurate search results.
     Nicholas Wheeler, Managing Director of ITN Multimedia, said:  "ITN has
 always pioneered new and innovative ways to deliver its content and the blinkx
 platform is certainly an exciting new proposition that is really opening up
 the type of information that is searchable and available on the web.
     "In an increasingly fragmented market, it's important that users can find
 high-quality, relevant content as easily as possible and blinkx helps do that.
 We are delighted that this deal with them will enable us to extend the reach
 of our news and entertainment content still further."
     "blinkx is committed to providing users with quality content from a range
 of sources," said Federico Grosso, VP business development for Europe, blinkx.
 "ITN provides 24-hour news, seven days a week, so really gives users immediate
 and constant access to breaking stories in the UK and abroad. The channel is
 well-regarded and relied upon in the UK and thanks to the blinkx technology
 can now be searched by millions more users across the world."
     ITN is the first blinkx partner to take advantage of blinkx.tv DirectPlay,
 allowing it to be linked to from both www.blinkx.tv's search results as well
 as www.ITN.co.uk.  The site is funded by advertising.
 
     More about blinkx.tv DirectPlay and Eyeblaster
     blinkx.tv DirectPlay is based on blinkx's established and successful
 SelfCast platform that hosts and manages content from amateur content creators
 and vloggers.  DirectPlay is an IPTV platform that provides content publishers
 with a single-stop solution to recording, encoding, hosting, streaming,
 distributing and monetizing television and video content on the internet.
 Utilizing blinkx's popular video search infrastructure that already offers
 over a million hours of content at www.blinkx.tv, DirectPlay records and
 encodes content in multiple formats.  The content is then played back through
 branded video players that can be linked to from both www.blinkx.tv search
 results as well as content publisher sites.  DirectPlay supports multiple
 delivery technologies including branded Flash-based players, a full screen
 playback mode, and off-line delivery options RSS, Atom and iTunes; DirectPlay
 partners can distribute their content directly to the Video iPod and other
 portable media players with fully-automatic, one-click synchronization.
     In conjunction with the ITN agreement, blinkx has also entered into a
 partnership with the online rich media advertising specialist, Eyeblaster.
 Using the Eyeblaster Rich Media Platform, blinkx will now also insert
 advertising into all searchable ITN content; any revenue generated from this
 advertising will be shared by blinkx and ITN.
 
     About blinkx
     blinkx, the smartest thing on your computer and on the Web, is changing
 the way that people think about search. Only blinkx can harness the desktop,
 Web and TV -- unifying content with a one stop search tool. Available to users
 on the Web at www.blinkx.com and www.blinkx.tv, as well as free to download,
 blinkx automatically and intelligently links to content anywhere and in any
 format, on the Web, on the desktop and even on TV. blinkx's conceptual toolbar
 means users are no longer limited to keyword search; instead, blinkx assesses
 all the information that the user is actively viewing, and automatically
 recommends and retrieves relevant content, from local, Web and TV searches,
 based on context. In addition, www.blinkx.tv makes thousands of hours of TV
 content fully searchable and available on demand for the first time. blinkx is
 a privately-held company based in San Francisco and London. More information
 is available at www.blinkx.com.
 
     About ITN
     ITN is one of the world's leading news producers, providing news
 programming for the main commercial broadcasters in the UK and its combined
 news broadcasts reach over two-thirds of the UK population.  The company has a
 strong reputation for the creative and innovative use of modern technology,
 winning the Royal Television Society's 2004 Innovation Award.
     ITN is driving expansion in the fast-growing new business area of ITN
 Multimedia, where the company is established as the UK's leading supplier of
 news and other video entertainment content to 3G mobile phones. Key partners
 to ITN Multimedia are mobile operators such as Vodafone, 02 and 3 as well as
 established broadband operators yahoo! and MSN, and enterprising new companies
 such as Greengrass.tv.  www.itn.co.uk
 
 

SOURCE  blinkx