Youku has developed a sophisticated monitoring system: dozens of editors watch new material and classify it, building a video database that can be used to find good content, but also to block undesirable clips.

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In 2008, it partnered with Mayors Against Illegal Guns to create a video database of gun purchases at its stores and said it would trace any firearms bought from its stores that were later used in a crime.

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Unlike that mainstream Mountain View product, however, Mann's version has reportedly been around in one form or another for 34 years, and was designed with the objective of aiding vision, rather than capturing stills and video or providing a bounty of database-aided readouts.

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Another feature called "Expert On-Demand, " sorts through a company's database of experts to create a video connection between a user--say, a confused customer in a bank's branch office--and the person best suited to answer his or her questions on any given topic.

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Does it contain a significant amount of unstructured data from video or audio or can it be put into a relational database easily?

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Amazon appears serious about selling music and video content, as well as leveraging their vast could servers and credit card database.

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Japanese video game developer Sega Corp said on Sunday that information belonging to 1.3 million customers has been stolen from its database, the latest in a rash of global cyber attacks against video game companies.

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