BBC and IBM announced this week the beginning of a long term strategic alliance to work on several joint projects. The implementation of IBM's image/video search technology, code name Marvel, is one of the most important of them. With Marvel, IBM is looking to provide the horsepower to take full advantage of the extensive TV and radio archive BBC possesses.
"One of the first projects will focus on applying state-of-the-art image/video search technologies to CBeebies and CBBC programmes. This IBM Research system, code-named "Marvel," has the ability to visually analyse images/video to categorise the content based on appearance and make it more searchable. The project will utilise Marvel to create a compelling set of multimedia interactive search experiences for accessing BBC children's content on-line."
IBM and BBC are also discussing collaboration in other areas like content distribution, joint research, and rights management. If you want to give IBM's Marvel online demo a try just go here.