Blinkx collaborates with The Times and The Sunday Times

Searching software developer Blinkx is due to announce that they are getting into a Search Toolbar Distribution Deal with The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers. The collaboration would result into a co-branded version of Blinkx’s search toolbar. This deal of a co-branded search toolbar come just weeks after Google went into a similar deal with Sun Microsystems.

Suranga Chandratillake, Blinkx CTO and founder expects this deal to add thousands of new users to their service. They currently have around 1.5 million active users. And for their new partners The Times and The Sunday Times, it would result in new online offerings and services for their readers.

The Blinkx search technology works by monitoring whatever content the user is viewing and generates links in real-time to related audio, video, and text content. The aim is to provide alternate locations with similar content to sites a user is visiting at any given time. Also, as a part of this deal, Users of the Times Online Smart Search toolbar also will gain access to Blinkx’s “smart folders”.

With most newspapers reporting declining sales of their offline editions, they are looking for online sources to get more readers to their services to survive in this competing market.