Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IMDb Turns 15

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the where-else-would-i-go dept.

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."

6 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Actually, it's 15 years and 2 days ago by Brama · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  2. Alternate Interfaces by anandpur · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  3. Original Usenet Post by byteCoder · · Score: 5, Informative

    The original Usenet post is here, courtesy of Google.

  4. Re:What other pre-web services are out there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Weather Underground. It existed solely as an interactive Telnet service.

  5. Re:What other pre-web services are out there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:What other pre-web services are out there? by Michael+Meissner · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/