[Infowarrior] - After banning YouTube, military launches TroopTube

[Richard Forno]

After banning YouTube, military launches TroopTube

By JESSICA MINTZ
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 11, 2008; 4:10 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/11/AR2008111101741_pf.html

SEATTLE -- The U.S. military, with help from Seattle startup Delve  
Networks, has launched a video-sharing Web site for troops, their  
families and supporters, a year and a half after restricting access to  
YouTube and other video sites.

TroopTube, as the new site is called, lets people register as members  
of one of the branches of the armed forces, family, civilian Defense  
Department employees or supporters. Members can upload personal videos  
from anywhere with an Internet connection, but a Pentagon employee  
screens each for taste, copyright violations and national security  
issues.

Part of Delve's work was to build speedy tools for approving and  
sorting incoming videos. Its technology also crunches video files into  
several sizes and automatically plays the one that best suits viewers'  
Internet connection speeds.

But the startup's real forte is making sure searches on the site turn  
up the best video results. Delve's system turns a video's sound into a  
text transcript. It pares unimportant words like "this" and "that,"  
then compares what's left against a massive database of words commonly  
uttered in proximity to each other, collected from crawling hundreds  
of millions of Web pages.

The result: Even if speech recognition software trips on the one word  
someone is searching for, there's a good chance Delve can still  
deliver relevant results.

In May 2007, the Defense Department banned employees and soldiers from  
accessing sites including YouTube and MySpace, citing security and  
bandwidth issues. Delve Chief Executive Alex Castro called TroopTube a  
"retention tool" aimed at a generation of soldiers who bring laptops  
to the front lines.

"A lot of people are excited in the company to be doing something for  
the people who make sacrifices," said Castro, his eyes tearing. "We're  
proud of this."

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On the Net:

http://www.trooptube.tv