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Blinkx launching video screensaver

Turn down that TV! Oh wait...

Rafe Needleman Former Editor at Large
Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.
Rafe Needleman
2 min read

Blinkx makes very slick video search technology that has been available for quite some time to consumers through Blinkx.com. One of the site's cool features is that if you enter in a search term, it will play in succession all the videos it finds that term in.

Now Blinkx is popping that idea out of the browser and putting it in a downloadable screensaver app. Blinkx Beat lets you create your own channels that automatically play when your screensaver pops on (or whenever you want, providing Blinkx Beat is configured as your PC's default screensaver). You can also set it to display preconfigured channels like News or Sports.

To select videos from a playlist, you can use Blinkx's attractive but uninformative video "wall," which shows you moving thumbnails of videos in a channel, but not quite enough information to tell if they're worth zooming in on.

All the news that fits in your screensaver.

It's a nice-looking app but it's already gotten me into trouble. I set up the Blinkx Beat screensaver and then got called off to a meeting. The video popped on to my screen, with audio, distracting and disturbing co-workers. When I got back to my desk, I was greeted with glares. Honestly, I never did get content-based screensavers. Who wants to run an app that's most useful when you're away from your PC? But if you want to use your PC as a stand-in for a TV that you'd otherwise always leave on, give it a shot.

Blinkx will be presenting at a New Tech Meetup I'm moderating tomorrow, along with Seero, Seesmic, Mesmo, and Your Truman Show. The event is sold out but I'll report on the highlights afterwards.