Let's hear it for audio mining

he Web, databases, and other digitized information storehouses contain a growing volume of audio content. Sources include newscasts, sporting events, telephone conversations, recordings of meetings, Webcasts, documentary archives such as the Visual History Foundation's interviews with Holocaust survivors (http://www.vhf. org), and media files in libraries. Users want to make the most of this material by searching and indexing the digitized audio content. In the past, companies had to create and manually analyze written transcripts of audio content because using computers to recognize, interpret, and analyze digitized speech was difficult. However, the development of faster microprocessors, larger storage capacities, and better speech-recognition algorithms has made audio mining easier. Now, the technology is on the verge of becoming a powerful tool that could help many organizations. For example, companies could use audio mining to analyze customer-service and helpdesk conversations or even voice mail. Law enforcement and intelligence organizations could use the technology to analyze intercepted phone conversations. Public relations firms could use it to analyze news broadcasts to find coverage of clients.