Convera and Nexidia Partner to Deliver Integrated Audio Search

VIENNA, VA and ATLANTA, GA - Convera (Nasdaq: CNVR) and Nexidia announced a new partnership that will add phonetic audio search as an optional component to Convera's RetrievalWare search and categorization platform. According to Nexidia, its technology embedded within Convera's search platform allows RetrievalWare to search the equivalent of 30 hours of audio information in less than one second. Nexidia's phonetic searching pinpoints specific spoken words from text queries in either word or phrase formats by analyzing the phonetic content of either indexed audio or video files based on the similarity of sound. "The drive today is to make all information, regardless of format, accessible through one point of access," said Susan Feldman, research vice president for Content Technologies, IDC. "Convera's integration of Nexidia's audio capabilities does not require translation first into text, which is significant because the technology now extends the same access to voice information that exists for text. Applying powerful search and categorization technologies to voice will make a new medium searchable, browsable, and open to high-end analysis." Nexidia's technology adds to RetrievalWare's phonetic search capability, identifying not just dictionary words but also slang terms and code words. In addition to retrospective search, Convera will offer Nexidia technology for real-time monitoring of audio, matching capabilities already offered by Convera's Profiling feature for processing textual content. "Our unique, phonetic-based audio search technology allows users to increase productivity by taking advantage of new strategies for intelligently mining the wide variety of audio that they collect everyday in order to identify trends and patterns that can be converted into actionable knowledge," said Ray S. Naeini, CEO and president of Nexidia.