Social search engine Mahalo is prepped to launch a daily video blog podcast, The Mahalo Daily (ok, not a very original title, but we’re more focused on the content). Hosted by Veronica Belmont, the show’s content will cover every topic under the sun, just like Mahalo.

Until the show’s official launch on Monday, November 5th, this trailer was released to pique some interest.

Does anyone use twitter more than Mahalo founder, Jason Calacanis? By the way, Jason, you should have hit up the Cupping Room for breakfast.

I guess it would be asking too much for TV Guide to index more than what is produced by linear networks. The online video guide launched earlier this month is useful - It deep links directly to individual episodes in network players from a central location, but it lacks independently produced content.

Above: TV Guide’s Online Video Guide - Cold Case anyone?

In the fight for eyeballs, independent producers have an enormous battle to wage against traditional media. Content discovery is a big mess right now. Search is not necessarily the best way for users to find entertainment and it’s even worse for producers seeking to build an audience.

We’re in a period of novelty for online content due to the fragmentation of mainstream media content online. Once the major players figure things out and become entrenched it will become more difficult for existing independent producers who have been successful online to maintain their foothold, small as it already is.

It may be time for top independent producers to form a coalition to promote original online programming and to find a better way to push their content to a larger audience

Wednesday I will be at the IP Media Expo, co-located with Satcon and the HD Media Expo. It should be interesting to see some of the broadcast quality video over IP content delivery solutions hitting the market.

I will also be speaking with Dale Herigstad, co-founder and Chief Creative officer at Schematic who has worked on the interfaces for XBox 360, Microsoft Surface and is a thought leader on development of GUIs for EPGs.

I’m hoping to get his ideas on the future of TV and content discovery and whether the english language will sooner or later consist entirely of acronyms.

Check out the interview with him above (thanks Kempton) and If you have questions you think I should ask leave a comment.

TV Guide will move its Online Video Guide from beta to an officially launched product tomorrow. Their online video search platform is strictly TV focused, enabling users to avoid hundreds of results pointing to user generated content and spoofs, and instead towards officially and professionally produced content from the broadcasters.

“We’re filling a niche that Google and YouTube are not because they’re not strictly TV-focused,” said Paul Greenberg, GM of TV Guide Online.

“Part of the way we’re marketing this is, ‘Oh, you forgot to set your TiVo? Here’s the show you missed, for free,’ ” Greenberg said.

Similarly, LocateTV.com goes from private to public beta today. The startup video search platform is designed to help users find legitimate TV content whether it is on broadcast TV or online.

Google is putting a more direct sell on their filter for video discovery. From the Google blog:

Since new videos are constantly appearing all over the web, it’s difficult to keep tabs on all of them. But now Google Alerts will make it easy for you to add video to your other Alerts: News, Web, Blog and Groups.

The problem is that Google’s video search technology is not as good as some of the more focused video search companies like Truveo and Blinkx. With Google, you’re still mostly limited to the world of GooTube. So they’re making a stronger push to keep users going to them.

Google’s example in their blog post, a search for Jack Russell Terrier turns up only one video outside their realm in the top 100 results. A Blikx search for the same returns videos from CBS4 Miami, Metacafe, Revver, RealNetworks, ExpoTV and Funny or Die.

Either Google will need to acquire a competing video search company or improve their own technology to stay competitive in video search. For now they’re taking this sales technique of pushing results to users to stay on top. Competing video alert services are sure to follow.

Viewdle has announced a partnership with Reuters for facial recognition video index and search. The company showcased their Viewdle Engine today TechCrunch 40, check it out here.

According to an e-mailed release “Reuters.com, will use the Viewdle engine to automatically extract metadata from select Reuters satellite streams and provide real-time indexing and search capabilities.”

I first heard about this technology several months ago at the last OMMA Video event. It fills a critical need for companies like Reuters which constantly monitors and serves online video featuring public figures.

Much of the workflow for professional online video has been digitized but adding metadata during ingestion is one area of continued weakness. Individual loggers are still heavily depended on to classify content, a time-consuming, manual process. In a newsroom improved speed and accuracy as a result of this type of technology offers a big advantage.

The beauty of Viewdle is that once a person has been recognized, he or she can be located in all past and future content automatically. A producer putting together a package on say, George W. Bush, can find every piece of George Bush content in the Reuters Library instantly, and can do so for new content much more quickly.

Where this gets really exciting is integrating it with other search technologies to form a completely automated digital indexing system. Manual ingestion and logging will soon be a thing of the past, replaced by an entirely automated digital workflow in which content is instantly available to producers and editors as soon as it is shot.

In an interesting twist on leveraging Google’s AdSense network, The Big G will be distributing short video clips from Seth McFarlane, creator of “The Family Guy,” and from Disney’s Raven Symone, within the AdSense units.

The programs will appear in a video box that a user would click on to start. The box will be packaged with banner advertising and video ads that will appear either before or after the programming.

AOL has launched a new version of Truveo.com, a search tool for finding video from across the Web.

The new Truveo.com enables users to search and browse millions of videos from thousands of sources across the Web. Truveo’s search results are organized by category and by source so that users can easily choose the video they want or ignore those from sites they don’t like.

A unique benefit for branded entertainment and other corporate content - no doubt influenced by AOL’s new ad-support focus - users will be directed to the content owner’s original website to view videos from leading media brands, ensuring that videos found in Truveo’s search results willbe viewed in the highest quality with the experience intended by the original content owner.

While still very much a nascent industry, there is no denying the importance that video search is going to play much sooner than later.

In a press release, blinkx announced that it has indexed more than 14,000,000 hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on demand.

In light of the recent survey claiming that 90% of users can’t find the videos they are looking for, solid video search technology is a very much needed and welcome product. Additionally, the introduction of their ad platform, ad hoc, stands to change the way video advertising is matched with video content.