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VideoSurf, a search engine for online video content, has been acquired by Microsoft, it was announced today. The service's sophisticated, multi-source video search technology will be built into Microsoft's XBox Live platform, which will see several new entertainment media partnerships in the coming months.

The acquisition, which cost Microsoft a reported $70 million, brings facial and object-recognition video search to the XBox, so it no longer relies solely on descriptions and other meta data when conducting searches. It works across services, so a search for "Lady Gaga" will return results from Netflix, Hulu and a variety of online video sources.

Yahoo just announced that it has upgraded its video search product with new features that make it easier to discover music videos. Yahoo Video Search now recognizes and shows the most popular albums and songs whenever a user searches for an artist or band. A sidebar on Yahoo Video Search now displays an artist's most popular albums and songs. The album view then allows users to drill down even deeper and see videos for all the songs on this album.

We're currently running a series of posts about recommendation technologies and in the comments of our last post about the Netflix Prize, a company called Jinni made itself known. Jinni is a kind of 'Pandora for movies', because it aims to recommend movies and tv shows to you based on its Movie Genome (aping Pandora's Music Genome Project). Jinni's genome project contains over two thousand "genes" that describe plot, mood, style, setting, soundtrack and more. Jinni says that its ontology was created by film professionals - much like Pandora employs people to create its unique music database.