Yahoo Gives the iPad the Power to Understand TV

A new iPad app from Yahoo can recognize any TV show by listening to the audio, and automatically serve up related Web content, such as news stories related to a news broadcast or play-by-play stats for a ballgame.

The app, called IntoNow, is a refreshed and improved version of technology that Yahoo acquired by buying a startup with the same name. When the company was swallowed by Yahoo in May, it was only able to share information over Facebook and Twitter about what show a user was watching. By using Yahoo technology that can recognize the meaning of text, the IntoNow version released today is much more capable, says Adam Cahan, who founded IntoNow and is now a Yahoo executive.

"This technology actually understands the 'aboutness' of the show," Cahan said at a Yahoo press event. He showed the app automatically pulling up a list of Yahoo news content related to a story airing on CNN about an airplane making an emergency landing in Warsaw, Poland. The app also uses its knowledge of the show to find relevant Twitter conversations.

IntoNow identifies TV shows by comparing an audio "fingerprint" of a person's viewing with a vast library of TV audio fingerprints stored on cloud servers. The closed captions for that moment can then be retrieved and fed into Yahoo's technology to determine the meaning of what is currently on screen.