Sonic Foundry receives grant from U.S. Department of Justice - Brief Article

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Oct 27, 2003

Sonic Foundry Inc. (Nasdaq:SOFO) has announced it has been awarded a grant from the United States Department of Justice. The $496,000 grant will fund an 18-month project in which Sonic Foundry will examine how state and local law enforcement agencies can better process and manage audio and video media. The company will then develop a set of media analysis software components that will form the foundation for addressing multiple law enforcement applications related to media, such as the indexing and cataloging of media, data mining and electronic surveillance.

"A real need exists to advance the science of media collection, analysis and interpretation within the law enforcement community. Much of the research problem tends to be related to workflow and the time it takes to interpret complex rich media," said Rimas Buinevicius, chairman and CEO for Sonic Foundry. "Our plan is to work with both expert advisers and researchers to advance the technology for ultimate integration in specific application areas."

Much of the rich media creation, analysis and indexing technologies that will provide the foundation for this project came to Sonic Foundry through its 2001 acquisition of Pittsburgh-based MediaSite. The proprietary digital media indexing and analysis engine, ISLIP (Integrated Speech, Language and Image Processing), is the result of extensive research at Carnegie Mellon University and funding by leading government agencies and private corporations, including NASA, DARPA, NSF, Bell Atlantic, Boeing, CNN, Intel and Microsoft.

Founded in 1991, Sonic Foundry (Nasdaq:SOFO) is a provider of rich media communications technology for the enterprise. The company's high-performance Webcasting and Web presentation solutions are trusted by Fortune 500 companies, education institutions and government agencies for a variety of critical communication needs. Sonic Foundry is based in Madison, Wis.