I’ve just read The New York Times’s very positive, almost gushing review of Blinkx. At first, I thought it must be some sort of paid advertisement, but I have unwavering faith in The New York Times’s journalistic standards. The journalist, Jason Pontin, seemed in-love with the product, and he’s not exactly unfamiliar with the technology space–he’s the editor-in-chief and publisher of MIT’s Technology Review.

In any case, the excitement being generated by Blinkx makes sense, given how obsessed with video everyone is after the sale of YouTube to Google. The consensus seems to be that Blinkx’s technology is not perfect, but that it’s better than the competition. As Pontin explains: “[S]earch engines — like Google — that were developed during the first, text-based era of the Web do a poor job of searching through this rising sea of video.” If these guys can really create a decent search engine for videos (something that no one else currently does), they’ll make a lot of money for themselves and for their investors.

I briefly tested out the site, and the first thing that you notice is that it looks really cool. I like the video wall.

The website claims that they already have 7 million hours of searchable video content. I did a search for videos with the singer “Jennifer Holliday” and got 15 results, including Podcasts and previews of some videos. Not all of the results were relevant. Many related to Dreamgirls or to the song “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” without any obvious reference to Jennifer Holliday (other than the fact that she’s the one that originally made both the show and the song famous).

The New York Times notes that Blinkx has received $12.5 million from angel investors. Those must be some big angels. It seems that they’re now making the rounds talking to VCs. Fred Destin of Atlas Venture, for example, has a brief review of Blinkx and notes that the founders had apparently gone to Atlas Venture to present their product, though he didn’t have the chance to meet with them. In Spain, Atlas was involved with eDreams until its recent sale to TA Associates.

Check it out! This might be a star in the making.