PodVinder : spoken document retrieval for Dutch pod- and vodcasts

Showing an uncle in Brazil a picture of the beautiful weather on holiday or sharing a video of the new puppy with a friend in Australia has never been easier. A mobile phone with camera and Internet access is enough: take a picture or video, upload it on a weblog, picture- or videosharing site such as Myspace, Flickr or YouTube and the whole world is informed about your latest adventures. The ease with which people create and publish information nowadays has revolutionized traditional media patterns. Up to now these patterns have been characterized by a limited number of sources (e.g., public and commercial media companies) using a limited range of media (e.g., newspapers, radio and television) dispensing information at fixed times. In contrast, people now create information on the fly using technologies like mobile phones and digital cameras and publish it directly on the Internet. People can share what they want, the way they want and users can access this information at a time and in a format of their choice. The potential of this concept is that everyone can become a publisher of information, and by using the Internet for distribution, the material becomes available around the world. Information that normally would not be published by traditional sources, such as a magnificent goal scored in a local soccer game or a 5-year old opera singer from Russia, now becomes available for anybody. Whereas the big content providers firstly made information available for users, these users are now the new big content providers. The result is an enormous source of original, specialised and exclusive content.