NEWSLETTER #2
3rd August 1995
edited by Col Needham
Welcome to issue 2 of the IMDB newsletter. The newsletter is intended to
keep database users and contributors informed of the latest developments
from the management team. Comments and suggestions are welcome and should
be directed to me at the address above.
See the further information section at the end of this file for more
information about The Internet Movie Database (IMDB).
Thanks to everyone who helped with the request in the last issue to
research missing directors - we're now down to 2,497 out of 50,000
movies. Let me know if you'd like to help with the remaining titles.
Contents
This is a regular section giving information about the current size and
growth of the IMDB. We receive between 15,000 and 30,000 additions
every week from users all over the world.
Number of filmography entries: 665,811
Number of people covered: 216,641
Number of movies covered: 50,606
Size of the database (Mb): 49
by Rob Hartill
In mid July, the www interface to the IMDB reached the grand old age of
2, and to celebrate, err, it just continued with business as usual. The
main server at Cardiff (UK), has served close to 30 million request
(most, but not all for the movie database) in that time.
A lot has changed in 2 years, and I'm sure a few of the people who have
been using the www interface since the early days have missed a few of
the changes and enhancements, both to the www interface and the database
content. An overview of what's available via the www interface is now
available via the 'Tour'... a page with lots of links to examples of all
the different types of information. This is primarily aimed at new users,
but it's worth a look if you haven't seen
it.
by Col Needham
A new WWW mirror in the USA has recently gone live at:
http://rte66.com/Movies/
they are waiting for a change in IP address to propagate out so if the
above doesn't work, please try:
http://198.147.111.29/Movies
The mirror is part of The Los Angeles Webstation, a local information
service for the Greater Los Angeles area, including a searchable index of
cinema and TV schedules with links from each title into the database.
by Col Needham
In addition to the tour Rob has been busy adding lots of new features to
the WWW interface, including:
- a graphical menu bar to aid navigation around the database and improve
the presentation of the database.
- a new search method available via the search page to list the names of
cast and crew who worked on a group of movies. This will be useful for
finding the name of someone you recognise in a couple of movies, but
can't put a name to the face
- the exact vote
counts are now available in the ratings section so you can see
precisely how many people have voted for each element on the 1
to 10 scale. See:
- the movie links
information is now listed at the bottom of the title details page,
allowing it to be formatted much more cleanly.
by Col Needham
This is a pre-announcement to warn of an impending change to the policy
on non-English titles in the database. To reflect the increasing
international focus of the database we are changing the rules governing
which titles are used as primaries and which are listed as alternatives.
The new policy will be to use the original title in the country of origin
as the primary title with the English translation as the alternative.
This shouldn't make much difference to the search process since in most
of the interfaces also search the alternative titles database if a match
isn't found in the primary index. The change should take place within the
next month or so.
by Col Needham
On 24th July Colin Tinto, Mark Harding and myself (the UK resident subset
of the team) went along to the Cambridge Film Festival as invited guests
on their "Internet and Film" open day. The day itself was in addition
part of the 4th annual COMEX conference (COMEX is a national organisation
of independent film exhibitors/distributors here in the UK).
I gave a 40 minute overhead projector presentation outlining the database
and including a quick tour through some representative pages. The session
was very well received with lots of questions from people who ranged from
regular users of the IMDB through to some who hadn't really heard of the
Internet before the start of the day.
As well as providing a rare opportunity for some of the team members to
meet in person, we also made numerous contacts who were interested in
supplying all kinds of information to the database. We spent the full two
hour lunchtime and all the coffee break demonstrating and discussing the
database with the attendees.
The programme for the Cambridge Film Festival, including links into the
IMDB for each movie is available on-line at:
http://www.gold.net/camfest/
by Col Needham
We're always interested to know of any existing magazines / newspapers /
books which feature the database, or if you're an author planning to
write about the database for such publications.
The IMDB had a very favourable write-up in the August issue of thr UK
Internet magazine .net. The magazine covered movie sites around the web
and included an interview with Mark Harding and myself on what goes on
behind the scenes in the database. For details of the issue see:
http://www.futurenet.co.uk/netmag/Issue9/Contents.html
The database also featured briefly in an article in the main national
daily newspaper in Finland, "Helsingin Sanomat". Thanks to Kimmo
Ketolainen for letting us know about that.
We've also been awarded a certificate of merit in the Point survey of the
top sites on the web. You can read their review of the IMDB at:
http://www.pointcom.com/gifs/reviews/710001.htm
other movie sites are reviewed on:
http://www.pointcom.com/gifs/reviews/aemo.htm
We're currently listed top of the most visited sites list, joint second
for top experience and joint third place for content:
http://www.pointcom.com/gifs/topsites/
by Col Needham
After delays owing to work and study committments, both the writers and
genres sections are now back on track and are being updated regularly.
The processed backlog has resulted in a massive improvement in coverage,
particularly in the genres section. We now have at least one major genre
category for 1/4 of the database titles.
Remember you can always find out when any section in the database was
last updated by checking here.
by Col Needham
Harald Mayr has asked me to point out a
clarification in the rules regarding submissions to the production
designers list:
Please do not send any submissions for the production designers section
if the person is not specifically credited for 'production designer'.
Production designers are usually credited at the beginning of the movie.
Any information regarding 'assistant production designers', 'art
directors', 'set decorators' or similar should be sent to the
miscellaneous section.
Similar rules apply to the other sections regarding assistants and second
unit crew, but note *all* producer credits are eligible for the producers
section regardless of whether they are credited as executive,
co-producer, associate, line etc.
by Col Needham
The explosion in growth of the database in the last few months means that
another patched version 3.2 of the Unix interface will be released in the
next week or so. The problem is that the number of titles is dangerously
close to the 65,535 limit in the software. I originally stored the title
key codes in 16 bits figuring this gave us years of growth but I
underestimated significantly. If you use the Unix package look out for
further announcements and an update on the ftp sites. This unfortunately
means a large increase in the diskspace required by the package.
by Michel Hafner
To celebrate the five year jubilee of the IMDB there will be a quiz,
featuring 100 questions, all related to the world of movies. Participants
can win prizes! Details will follow within the next months and be
announced in relevant news groups and on the WWW servers.
This is a regular section listing some of the enhancements we're
currently looking at. Please bear in mind that some of these may take
quite a while to come to fruition or even fail to materialise because
the original volunteer decides not to proceed.
- a new business information section for the database to store
distributors and rights holders contact details, box office
grosses and other information concerned with the business side
of the industry.
- an alternative versions section grown from the current holdings
in the trivia section in this area. The section will cover
details and differences between directors cuts, video versions,
censored versions of movies in the database.
- a LaserDisc availability section. Note: this section will be
strictly limited to LD's only and not grown into any kind of
generic video catalog.
- a locally installable MS-Windows interface to the database is
under final testing for those of you who want to reduce your
phonebills!
- new "professional" looking icons under construction for the WWW
interface.
- enhanced awards section for the database covering more
international festivals, national film institutes etc.
- general support for alternative titles in languages other than
English and the language of the original country.
|
