IndependentFilm.com

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- GUBA(TM), LLC -- a pioneering provider of Internet-based multimedia search and technology -- today announced its enhanced service for the discovery, browsing and immediate download of terabytes of multimedia content from 'the dark web.' The dark web refers to those parts of the Internet that are not indexed or searchable by the major search engines -- Google(R), Yahoo(R) and Microsoft(R), et. al.

GUBA enables the fast and easy discovery of terabytes of unique, user-generated content from Usenet -- the world's largest bulletin board and the predecessor network to the World Wide Web. Since its development in 1979, Usenet continues to be one of the most active parts of the online community, with millions of users and terabytes of new, unique content, updated on a moment-by-moment basis. At www.guba.com, subscribers are provided a lens, or enhanced interface to the multimedia content of Usenet combined with a powerful keyword-based search engine. While Google does index the newsgroup text of Usenet, it does not currently index any of its multimedia content -- GUBA has been enabling the search of Usenet content since 1998 and is the acknowledged leader in this area. With GUBA finding compelling video and image content, it's as simple as entering a search term and clicking on a result.

For video and images alone, GUBA indexes 300,000 files per day from Usenet -- that is the equivalent of one image or video every .3 seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Content found on GUBA is available for download at the maximum speed of a subscriber's connection.

Usenet access is available to virtually anyone online through their Internet Service Provider (ISP) and can be accessed via most modern email programs such as Microsoft Outlook(R) Express or Mozilla(TM) Thunderbird(TM) -- the challenge is finding content among the tens of thousands of newsgroups and sorting through the thousands of message headers in every group (usually downloaded one at a time). Viewing and downloading content via Usenet is also less than intuitive, due to the unfamiliar protocols used on the service and the multiple audio/video formats. Using GUBA, finding content is as simple as entering a search term and clicking on the desired file to instantly watch, view or listen to it. GUBA's newly-enhanced service now enables a wide range of additional features for its subscribers, including:

-- Universal playback capabilities: on-the-fly transcoding of virtually
every video format into Macromedia(R) Flash(R), enabling subscribers to
instantly watch content online, regardless of whether or not they have
the needed video player on their PC
-- Support for Apple(R) Video iPod(R) playback in November -- download
video that is automatically optimized and enabled for playback on iPod
-- Previews of all video files prior to download via frame extraction
-- Detailed information on all content, plus related files that might also
be of interest
-- Copyright-optimized service: Unlike the Peer-to-Peer networks, GUBA's
filtering automatically removes any file protected by Digital Rights
Management (DRM) from the index and permanently blacklists it. GUBA
also supports:

- Image Scrubbing: GUBA's filters remove files that GUBA has banned or
are illegal, even if those image files have been slightly modified.
As GUBA receives new files, GUBA first ensures that none of the new
files match the blacklisted signatures or text patterns in GUBA's
database. GUBA immediately drops blacklisted files. Currently, GUBA
has a blacklist of approximately 350,000 images.
- Image Comparison: GUBA compares images and identifies image files
that are identical or almost identical. GUBA's proprietary
technology includes a Bayesian filter with Markov chaining that is
under development, as well as a machine learning mechanism, a
wavelet-band image matching algorithm and hash-based functionality.

"GUBA has built a strong and profitable business over the last 7 years by providing our subscribers with the best in rich media search -- our new enhanced capabilities will further extend our lead in this area and we look forward to providing a range of new content and services in the coming months," said Thomas McInerney, CEO of GUBA, LLC. "GUBA is actively looking to partner with content creators and studios to explore business models and revenue opportunities around their content properties. Offering an ad-free service, with all of our benefits and capabilities for only $14.95 per month has helped to propel GUBA to rank among the top 1,600 websites on the entire Internet by web traffic, according to Alexa(TM) -- we expect and hope to climb even higher with these new capabilities."

About GUBA

GUBA(TM) LLC ( http://www.guba.com/ ) provides its subscribers with a turnkey multimedia search and download solution to one of the Web's fastest growing libraries of new digital content. Terabytes of constantly refreshed pictures, video and audio files are fully searchable and immediately available for preview or download. GUBA was founded in 1998, has tens-of-thousands of paid subscribers and is profitable - there are no venture capital investments in the company.

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NOTE: GUBA is a trademark of GUBA, LLC. All other trademarks and registered trademarks previously cited are the property of their respective owners and are hereby recognized.

Source: GUBA, LLC