An apparent breakthrough in video search: "Until I saw the demo, I thought this type of technology was still years away."

Why you care, beyond new ways to waste time on YouTube: your company probably has a ton of images and video that can be used and reused in multiple ways -- maybe even monetized in the marketplace. Yet digital asset management has been a time-consuming and inexact process.

More: "You can use keywords to search VideoSurf, but this is really just a starting point. VideoSurf results provide a rich set of thumbnails that go beyond what you usually see in video search results."

VideoSurf debuted at the TechCrunch 50 conference. The site is still in stealth mode.

More here: "The software is smart enough to segment a video into different parts based on changes in the scenery. And it's smart enough to recognize people and their associations. If you type in "stand-up comedy," you get a video of George Carlin. The software grabs the most relevant video and ranks it first by looking at the air time and frequency of appearance of the subject of the search. It also returns videos with similar visuals."