Ooyala reminds me of riya.com where there was a great effort to tag images on the web…Similar to riya where experts in the field are going to develop video search software. Would be interested to see how it pans out

Via What Ooyala is Up To :

The company has hired six experts in computer vision, who’ve developed a way to catalog various objects within a video. When a viewer clicks on a football highlight featuring Patriots' QB Tom Brady , for example, Ooyala’s technology will know it is him and will bring up relevant information (this could be anything from links to products Brady sponsors, his statistics, or maybe a message board where fans can discuss his latest exploits).
Lepe says the experience could be tailored in many ways. The video could pause, or requests for information on objects could be sent into a shopping cart, to be explored after the video ends.

Then there’s the new interface. It’s Apple-esque in its look and feel, and offers an interesting wrinkle: it provides a way for content owners to bundle related clips together in what Ooyala calls “Channels”. The clip the viewer asked for shows up front and center, but other clips can be seen floating off to the side or behind (it’s vaguely reminiscent of Apple’s iChat videoconferencing, come to think of it). This might be a useful way for a movie studio to show trailers of all of its new releases. A cooking channel can show all clips about making dishes involving artichokes. A band could show footage of each song performed at its latest concert. Or a reporter, like this one, could show highlights of an interview.