The amount of officially sanctioned free television content on the Web is growing rapidly. The problem is: many people don’t yet know of its existence, and those that do, have no way of keeping up with additions, and finding the content easily.

Blinkx has hopefully solved the latter problem with its new Blinkx Remote service. Initially available in the UK, but with a US-centric version to follow, it’s kind of like a Google for free TV content on the Web. It shares similarities with services like tVadio.com and FindInternetTV.com

Blinkx Remote was originally launched in April 2007 but didn’t seem to make good headway and Blinkx is now relaunching a new and improved version of the service.

BBC iPlayer & More

Blinkx Remote filters out all of the illegal content, the spam and falsely tagged material that clogs up the Web to bring a fast and easy way of searching the Web for where you can watch your favourite programmes online in full.

The UK service aggregates all the content from the BBC iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4OD, ITV.com and Demand Five, plus the US networks that allow more than just US viewers to watch content online.

Blinkx is currently the largest and most advanced Internet video search engine in the world. Something that seems to be of interest to both Google and media conglomerate News Corp.

The company, which is based in Cambridge and San Francisco, was launched in 2004 by Suranga Chandratillake. It is currently listed on the London Alternative Investment Market.

Intense Speculation

There is speculation that both Google and News Corp are interested in buying the company out, which has seen its shares rise by 50% in light of the talk.

You may think the world already has enough Web TV applications to be going on with.

But the likes of Joost, Hulu, Vuze, Babelgum and more, now have a new competitor.

Blinkx already offer a video search engine, which enables users to browse their way through streaming videos from Google, YouTube, Metacafe and more.

Blinkx BBTV Launched

Now it has decided to try and compete in the already overcrowded online television sector, and today launched Blinkx BBTV (BroadBand TV) on to the masses.

The service offers the usual bells and whistles that you’d expect it to, with high quality video streaming, full screen viewing, and a choice of channels over many genres.

So far, so samey.

Showing how quickly the Internet TV and online video business moves these days, Blinkx has launched its own advertising platform just a day after Google officially announced AdSense video units.

Both of these new online advertising options allows publishers to earn extra revenue, but Blinkx AdHoc is much more universal than Google’s new offering which is limited to select YouTube videos. 

With AdHoc, users can add text advertisements to video from any of the major video-sharing sites including YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Revver, Metacafe, Veoh, DailyMotion, and more.

More Potential Than AdSense

The process is simple and can have website owners and bloggers set up with ads on video in a matter of minutes. Dare I say it has more potential than even AdSense video units at this point.

To generate the ad-embedded video player, users simply paste the embed code from any video website into AdHoc. 

After this, there is only one step which involves choosing whether to display the advertisements directly above the video or as an overlay that consumes the top 20% of the video (Google also offer both options).

Once that is complete, AdHoc provides the ad-enabled code to be copied and pasted into a website. When viewers click on these ads Blinkx will share 50% of that revenue.

Blinkx, which claims to be the world’s largest video search engine, has extended its staff headcount to forty through the hire of several new executives, stating the hires will support new initiatives and business development.

Two of the new executives will focus on content acquisition: John Bryan, formerly of MediaZone.com, and Marco Nadotti, from Babelgum, will be charged with pursuing large content acquisition deals and signing media partnerships.

Gavin Morgan comes on board from Miva to drive Blinkx’s syndication strategy in Europe, whilst Onil Gunawardana has been appointed to develop the company’s new contextual video advertising platform, AdHoc.

The new hires come at a busy time for Blinkx – it’s recently announced several partnerships, including one with GeoBeats.

[Press Release]

Time for rest and recuperation is essential which is why it is important to avoid any unnecessary stress when you go on holiday.

There could be nothing worse than jetting off to what you are assured is a peaceful Mediterranean paradise only to find yourself neck deep in drunk revellers, building sites and stolen travellers checks (i.e. a club 18 to 30 holiday).

Never fear however as GeoBeats, the video travel guide guru has teamed up with the video search engine hyperlord, blinkx, to help arm you with some up-to-date concrete video evidence that your destination of choice doesn’t resemble the ninth circle of Hell.

Blinkx already claims to be the world’s largest video search engine, but yesterday it reached new heights – 14,000,000 hours of searchable video, audio, viral and TV content.

The company, which floated on the London Stock Exchange in May, also claims to have over 200 media partnerships. One of the newest is with RealNetworks, where Blinkx provides the video search feature in the new RealPlayer 11.

Blinkx’s success as a video search engine relies on its patented search technologies which see and hear the web. This allows for more powerful search results than what can be achieved by meta-data based keyword searches.