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IMDb Turns 15
An anonymous reader writes "15 years ago today, Col Needham posted some shell scripts to rec.arts.movies which allowed anyone to search lists of actors, actresses, directors, and biographies. From this humble beginning -- which predates Yahoo, Google, and even the web itself -- the IMDb has wrangled the collective wisdom of millions of submitters to become not only a top 100 website but also a standard Hollywood tool for filmmaking. IMDb is celebrating with a retrospective of the last 15 years of IMDb and movies. Congratulations to IMDb and the internet community that built it."
Google groups link: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies/bro wse_frm/thread/47bf560d092d9314/2c3c98e25987bf44?l nk=st&q=group:rec.arts.movies+author:needham&rnum= 2&hl=en#2c3c98e25987bf44
No. It means they've been married 16.
--- Original Message ---
IMDb trivia page for Needham
(Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 04:12 PM October 17th, 2005 (#13811674)
Spouse
Karen Needham (22 July 1989 - present) 2 children
Does that mean she is only 16?
For more information, click here.
More than just top and bottom 250 movies http://www.imdb.com/Top/
http://www.imdb.com/interfaces
http://us.imdb.com/Licensing/structure.html
http://us.imdb.com/database_statistics
The original Usenet post is here, courtesy of Google.
The Weather Underground. It existed solely as an interactive Telnet service.
The On-Line Guitar Archive is nearing 15. They say the oldest file they can find is from June 12, 1992.
Wonder if the RIAA wishes those days of sueing over midis and lyrics and sheet music had never ended, when few had the bandwidth for mp3s.
I don't know about others but I've really come to dislike imdb.
1. The design is terrible. I find it unappealing. (not that this is a necessity, but it would be nice to see a facelift). I think it's the choice of font.
2. The layout is terrible. There are no borders to show logical divisions in the content. It still feels like an online list of data circa 1990.
2. Too many ads, in too obtrusive places
3. A9 box right by the search box. At least use some integration between the two like Wikipedia does with google. Don't try to sucker users into using A9 when clearly this isn't what they want.
4. Required to register to even *look* at the discussions.
5. Trivia and other user contributed stuff is always redundant and filled with grammatical errors.
6. ?
Without thinking too much about it, the mailing list sf-lovers (aka, morphed into USENET's rec.arts.sf.written) stems from about 1972 or so. When I checked a few days ago, there were still quite a few posters there: http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/AIM/scale/nethistory.html
The RISKS list dates from 1985 or so: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/
The comp.compilers group goes back to 1986 or so: http://compilers.iecc.com/
Why, the Hedgehog himself, of course!
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Mud1 has been running since 1980 and is still going.
I am trolling
I don't agree with your points as I am a bit liberal on such huge sites and I better clear something since I am directly connected to some actor who is listed on IMDB site.
o
You can't post headshot of him/her even if you pay for it. It has to be done with his/her agency or the person him/herself.
There is always copyright involved in movie business, its one of the reasons. Photo is not a feature for fans, its for artist/agency.
quoting from imdb
http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?photossubmitwh
Who is allowed to submit photos?
First and foremost, FANS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SUBMIT PHOTOS.
For People: You may submit a photo for yourself or an authorized representative may submit a photo on your behalf. Examples of authorized representatives include your agent, your publicist, your parent, or even a friend you asked to help you because you're no good with computers, just so long as they have your express permission. If you're submitting a photo for a person who is deceased, you must be that person's heir or have permission from their heir(s).
IMDb has a page for this
Since IMDb is more for reference, I personally prefer rottentomatoes.com for my "scoop" on movies.
I also like boxofficemojo.com to track a particular movie's progress at the box office.
I think the only thing that I use IMDb for is to look what movies a particular actor starred in and vice versa.
I am posting AC because I am not 100% positive, but I believe the Darwin Awards started out much like IMDB
I think Project Gutenburg would be the best example similar to IMDb. I believe they started around 1976 with the Declaration of Independence. Certainly grew into a world wide collaborative process before the WWW.
Spencer Ogden
Your comparison is invalid? CDDB charged for access to all the files contributed, IMDB remains absolutely free for all the same consumer information one can post.
Consider your payback the ability to access any of that information, and its continuous uptime.
Nice example.
"The FTP archive on gatekeeper.research.compaq.com is an unsupported service of Compaq Corporate Research."
It's not too well-known and is rather specialized, as far as I know, so if you changed the question to "what major, popular Internet service has been around longer than IMDB and still exists?" it might not qualify.
cdnow.com used to be accessed via telnet.
I find being offended by me offensive.
I happen to find IMDb to be too commercial for me... Too many ads, too much "Buy this at Amazon" buttons, it really becomes a chore to find information on IMDb these days. Recently, a couple alternatives seemed to have popped up, one of which being a wiki by the name of MovieWiki. It still seems to be in the works, but with more help, it could be an awesome replacement for IMDb. (Disclaimer: I work there)
I use IMDB but I'm not a big fan. I have over 300 films under my belt and yet I have maybe a dozen listings. They demand verification of credits so I gave up on them years ago. They had two glaring errors in my listing so I contacted them both times and both times they refused to correct the mistakes until I threatened legal action. I nearly lost a job because a Producer believed the credits on IMDB were accurate and questioned my resume. I was forced to verify some of my biggest credits before he'd accept the bulk of my resume. Most put too much faith in IMDB which makes it dangerous to the working people in the industry. A friend has an academy award and to this day they refuse to acknowledge it in his bio. It's a handy but over used service given how wildly inaccurate the information can be in the listings and they aren't inclined to correct errors.