Sonic Foundry Improves Multimedia Search with Latest Enhancements to Mediasite.Com

MADISON, WI — Sonic Foundry® Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), a leader in automated rich media communications technology, today announced new capabilities to Mediasite.com (www.mediasite.com). The latest enhancements include the ability to search for specific keywords that are contained within the graphical content window of a rich media presentation.

Sonic Foundry augments typical online search technology with proprietary algorithms that incorporate optical character recognition (OCR) technology to sharpen the search process within rich media content to more granular detail. For instance, a visitor searching for the term “bird flu” will find not only a complete listing of relevant, publicly-available presentations, but also the exact slides where the term appears – radically improving the speed and efficiency of finding information.

The company introduced Mediasite.com late last year and has steadily added new features and capabilities to improve the search experience. Thousands of visitors across the globe, including researchers, scientists, educators, students and professionals, are increasingly searching Mediasite.com for expert information. Today, there are nearly 10,000 rich media presentations available for viewing and the number keeps growing.

“Where else can you go online and view a multimedia lecture on the latest findings of the Bird Flu or the latest advancements on physics by a world renown lecturer or learn techniques on how to teach your child to read?” asked Rimas Buinevicius, chairman and CEO of Sonic Foundry. “Mediasite.com is a collection of expert presentations from all walks of life – and it offers the type of highly relevant knowledge usually made available only through the most prestigious learning outlets in the world.”

Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite is a transformational communication medium for delivering critical information and sharing knowledge. The Mediasite webcasting and content management system automates the capture and delivery of presentations and lectures via the web. By simplifying the complex processes of developing and delivering rich media content, Sonic Foundry enables education, business and government organizations to instantly create and webcast critical information like never before. The new search advances are currently deployed on all publicly-available presentations. Through an exclusive managed services offering, Sonic Foundry will apply the new search capability to private network content libraries.

The company continues advanced engineering work on process-based algorithms. It is incorporating both multi-modal analysis and metadata creation through the use of different media analysis modalities such as character recognition and phonetic search. The new functionality now applied to the Mediasite platform stems from the base of knowledge Sonic Foundry acquired in 2001, originating from a more than $20 million investment in research and development at Carnegie Mellon University.

“I have been watching this company for quite some time and have seen it evolve through its lifecycles. It has always been at the forefront of budding new technologies that meet a direct market need,” said Steve Vonder Haar, research director, Interactive Media Strategies. “Mediasite has paved the way as an industry leader and Sonic Foundry’s vision to offer up rich media content to enterprises of all kinds as a new way of communication is exactly on target. Customers’ infrastructures are built to handle the power of rich media and are ready to embrace this new medium. Mediasite.com is a great extension of that capability.”