FAST, the Norwegian company leading the search engine project known as Pharos – Platform for Search of Audiovisual Resources Across Online Spaces – has announced an €8 million grant from the European Commission.
“This research fund is validation of the key tenets and concepts behind PHAROS…†said Bjørn Olstad, FAST’s CTO and designated Technical Director of PHAROS.
Pharos will lead to “the establishment of a new audiovisual search platform that will allow businesses in various sectors to create compelling, next-generation audiovisual applications.”
Advanced search technologies giving better access to the exploding volume of audiovisual data – they are all the right words put in the right spaces and sounding very much like the spin around Quaero.
“FAST is spearheading innovation in information access technology,†said John M. Lervik, FAST’s CEO. Let us hope the 13 companies involved (list) from 9 countries (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the UK) see more eye to eye than the preceding French/German project.