Searching for live audio and video streams online could become much easier thanks to Balakam.com, an innovative search engine launched yesterday in beta version by a team from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fourth largest city.
Balakam has developed and patented particular search algorithms and an advanced crawling technology to retrieve and index live media streams throughout the Internet.
“Instead of creating another media portal or web search for stored multimedia files, we focused on finding the sources of audio and video streams,” Balakam PR Director Daria Golyanina said in an exchange with East-West Digital News. “This includes live broadcasting from stations, TV channels on location and even web cameras transmitting live audio and/or video content over the Internet.”
Balakam claims its distinctive feature is the ability to search for any live media content on any platform capable of producing it, regardless of the device used to do so – PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone or even Smart TV. The search engine can distinguish live signals and provide users with streams that can be played on that particular device or compatible devices.
Balakam is the first ever single resource on the Internet where users can search exclusively for live media content, Golyanina explained. “To do this, people normally use traditional search engines that process billions of streams but often fail to sort the information by relevancy, which leads to a huge volume of unfiltered search results and complete information overload. Another way to find the desired content is to use media portals like Justin.tv or Livestream.com, which provide highly relevant results, but only a limited number of streams. Users can also find some live streaming media on some forums or social networks, but search in this case takes too much time.”
“We have found a solution to the problem of finding and identifying live streaming content sources,” she summarized.
B2C and B2B targets
Targeting primarily the North American market for users and partners, the project is currently being presented at the Streaming Media West conference in Los Angeles.
Balakam hopes to do more than just attract a significant audience among Internet users interested in live media content. “Users could make Balakam their home page by default,” believes Golyanina. The company also has ambitions to establish partnerships with set-top box manufacturers and smart TV providers, taking advantage of the technology’s compatibility with any platform. Balakam also has plans for iPhone, iPad and Android applications in future releases.
Balakam search technology has been developed by MeraLabs, a Russian incubator of high-tech venture projects based in Nizhny Novgorod, under the direction of Professor Vladimir Krylov.
Krylov is a founding partner and CTO at Balakam who started his career as an Associate professor at Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University. He eventually became head of the university Department for Circuit Theory and Telecommunications before moving to the private sector working at Intel and Microsoft. He co-founded MeraLabs in 2008 and has been a driving force behind the Balakam project.
After two years of R&D, the technology was patented in 2010. In 2011, the project received seed funding from the Russian Venture Company, the state owned fund dedicated to fostering innovation in the country. “But we are considering a new round of fund raising to further develop the technology,” Golyanina said.
