Podscope lets listeners search for podcast content, and gives podcast publishers the ability to add a audio content search engine to their own sites.

The advent of podcasts (online radios shows in MP3 format available for download) has given searchers a new problem. How do you search the content of podcasts?

This is – after all – audio files with no written content apart from the file title and — normally — RSS description fields.

The podcast search engine Podscope claims that it has the solution. Unlike most search engines of this kind it actually analyzes the podscast sound and develops a searchable database based on automatic transcripts. We are talking about a serious voice recognition technology here.

This means that you do not have to listen through hours and hours of programming to find a show that covers your topic of interest. Instead you search the index of Podscope’s close to 5000 podcasters.

“Searching within audio and video files with Podscope’s spoken word index reveals their full content much like a Google or Yahoo search of text Web pages,� says David J. Ives, president and chief executive officer of TVEyes, Inc., the company behind Podscope.

“Podscope’s unique spoken word search and ability to play audio snippets at every point where keywords are mentioned makes it easy to ascertain relevancy – you don’t have to download and listen to the entire podcast to know if it’s what you want.�

The technology is not perfect, but they do actually manage to capture much of the content.

Podscope has also developed a service for podcast webmasters, allowing them to put up a search form on their own site letting visitors searh the content of their own podcasts.

Moreover, Podscope.com will now inform MyYahoo, Google and NewsGator users of new mentions of search terms within podcast audio and video files as they are indexed.

You may also submit your podcast to the podcast search engine.

See also Pandia’s recent article on podcast search engines.

Robin Good has an interview with David Eyes, founder of TVEyes: Search Audio Inside Podcasts, Radio and TV Shows: TVEyes and Podscope