Podscope is, at present, only capable of searching for words/phrases. It just so happens that I actually say “technology and libraries” in Open Stacks #18, so this searcher got a hit on their search. But I can’t imagine that they were actually looking for someone to explicitly say those words in that order. Maybe I’m wrong.

A quick look at the FAQ reveals the following:

My complex search isn’t returning any results. What’s going on?
Supporting complex boolean searches is tricky when dealing with audio files. We do plan on providing boolean search capabilities, but we want some community feedback on how it should behave.

I don’t see why Podscope would think Boolean is tricky. Once you’ve transcribed the audio, isn’t it like any other text? Podcast search cousin Podzinger seems to treat all multi-term searches with a Boolean AND, unless quotes are used, which is more in-line with searcher expectations.

But here’s something that’s genuinely tricky: getting accurate transcription results. Automated speech-to-text transcription technology is shockingly mediocre.

During my presentation at CiL, I played a sample Podscope result on the search term “libraries” and, wouldn’t you know it, no mention of “libraries” in the clip. Most folks in the audience were naturally expecting the word libraries and therefore totally missed the word “Blackberries” that was erroneously transcribed.

Podzinger shows keyword-in-context in their results, so you can get a feel for just how poor the technology is. A sample result for “libraries” reads as follows: “expensive business and that Contribution double life will be economy by libraries like good bet that there’s certainly”

All this to say that, while these automated speech-to-text technologies are interesting and fun, you have to understand their limitations before relying on them as a search tool. Added bonus tip: Until the technology improves, use fewer and shorter search terms/phrases to minimize the likelihood of transcription error masking the results you’re looking for.

First, this little workhorse opens through the right-click menu in your taskbar, so it doesn’t shrink your window size like plugin browsers. Pop a term into the search box and it searches one of the four main search engines (FAST, Google, Teoma, Inktomi) and makes it easy to switch between them. But that’s just the beginning. It has a (seriously) huge menu of reference applications that it can also drop your search term into.

Imagine that you’re new to XML (perish the thought). So you run a basic search with the engines, but you want a little more focus. With your term still in the search box, you peruse the menu hierarchy and see Webopedia. Selecting it drops your term right in to Webopedia and brings up the definition.

Plus there’s a handy shortcut syntax for each resource. Wanna see what Amazon has on XML? Type ‘amaz XML’ into the box. Bam! There are some issues with the shortcuts – if you wanted to search the term RSS, you will be taken to Feedster as rss is the shortcut. Nonetheless, this is astonishingly cool.

I can’t get over how much there is and how painless it is to use. Track stocks, track packages, hex conversions, currency conversions. It just goes on and on. Try the phone number speller. It takes your # and generates some amusing possibilities.

This is some serious good stuff and all from one application. Extremely impressive.

As the article clarifies, getting listed in dmoz is a fairly reliable way to appear in a variety of search engine indexes. So bring it on people.