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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."
Its easy to see that the IMDB is one of the oldest if not the oldest internet services (I'm not talking about protocols). And it also predates the web. I was wondering if any of you could name other Internet services that predate the web and still exist today. What constitutes a service is probably difficult because things like IMDB made a move from Usenet to Web which are two very different protocols (although they used them simularly).
DISCLAIMER: Again, i'm not talking about protocols like HTTP, Usenet itself, IRC, etc.
I just want to say Thanks! to everyone who has contributed to the the IMDb effort. Indeed, time and time again I have found it to be the ultimate resource when it comes to films. The database is always very complete, the summaries and cast lists accurate, and all in all it is a very helpful website.
Many cheers and pip to them all! May they continue to provide such a useful service for years to come.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Sorry, IMDb. I'm going to boycott you and go with a site where non-commercialism is more important.
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
Cheers!
-Buddy of DoQ
Do A-list movie stars have to pay to get their picture submitted? I understand the purpose for limiting photos for independent actors who use the site as an online resume; however, sometimes I don't remember a specific actor playing a certain role and I just wish that there were a picture there. Sometimes the galleries just feel empty.
IMDB is just fun to play around with. My friends and I have this challenge to see who has the most entries for acting in the IMDB. Orson Welles was the top guy for about a week. Then Peter North took over. He stayed there for a long time until it occurred to me to look up Mel Blanc. Anybody out there know someone who can beat Blanc (898 entries for acting)? Anybody out there want to guess on tops in other categories (writer, producer, notable TV appearances)? Is there a way to search IMDB for these statistics (of course, that would be cheating)?
Here's the mandatory google link:
After a quick search, here is the oldest google groups reference I could find.
It drive me *nuts* that they don't list any information about the music used in the movies.
It's a vital part of every movie, as vital as any of the other info listed, but for some reaon imdb always excludes it.
What gives?
http://web.archive.org/web/19970122085113/http://i mdb.com/ (couldn't use HTML link for it, so copy and paste that (no spaces)).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Even prior to Col's nifty script (which quite certainly was the beginning of the searchable IMDB), there was this innocent little posting with "THE LIST" as its subject. I don't recall the original author.
:-)
The body of the article was a rather short (5 - 10, IIRC) list of actresses. This list was better known as "the list of actresses we wish we could boink".
We guy-nerds (and maybe some properly-inclined gal-nerds) added to THE LIST for a few weeks until some decided that our salaciousness required male targets as well. Eventually, the lists, umm, grew and the "want to boink" aspect somewhat, umm, fell off.
So, before it went legit, the forerunner of IMDB was completely founded on fantasizing about sex.
I've submitted information to them on a couple of occasions, and the information still hasn't shown up.
An example: the movie Mannequin. IMDB says that there is no DVD available, but I happen to own one (and have for almost two years.) I submitted the information for it over 8 months ago, (including the barcode so they could even check it if they need to.)
This is what it shows for my update history:
Other updates I've made say exactly the same thing.
I just gave up.
Internet Media DataBase?
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Really? Because the other information (biographical and trivia-related, for example) that people can post for free can be (and I've seen many circumstances where this is the case) false and reputation-damaging, or simply an invasion of privacy. Don't get me wrong, IMDB is really neat, but there's no way for an individual to correct or limit the information about themselves.
The Oracle of Kevin Bacon
I don't know how long I spent looking for an actor with a Bacon number of 5, but I finally found one. Now if I could only remember his name!
-- Give us your technology and we'll give you all the cow lips you want.
The interfaces link above has a place for you to download text file exports of most of the actual movie data (attrociously normalized). I have occassionally wanted to use this data on my own site for various purposes, but there are all kinds of nasty warnings about copyright and how all one's base belongs to them. It had been my understanding that one could not copyright a collection of facts, though one could copyright a collection of facts organized and presented in a particular manner. Legally, is there any reason a person couldn't just take their data, import it into a format of their own design, and then do whatever they wanted with it?
In other words, do IMDB's though-shalt-not-use-our-data-without-licensing claims hold water? Do their legal threats only apply to imdb specific content like user comments or reviews (which I don't think are in the text dumps anyway) or do they also apply to things like public domain information about a movie?
I understand that IMDB does allow some use of the data, otherwise they wouldn't provide the dumps, but the question is, how can they restrict the use as much as they claim to?
Perhaps they could change it to "The Internet Media Database." It would be a little more indicative of what they do, but wouldn't require a domain change.
They aren't too snappy with the updates. I'm acquintances with a Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning actor who has some incorrect in his bio and they haven't corrected it after repeated attempts over two years.
That said, IMDb kicks ass.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Do A-list movie stars have to pay to get their picture submitted? I understand the purpose for limiting photos for independent actors who use the site as an online resume; however, sometimes I don't remember a specific actor playing a certain role and I just wish that there were a picture there. Sometimes the galleries just feel empty.
If these actors are using the site as an on-line resume, $35 is a trival (tax deductable) expense, especially when you consider the potential benefit.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
I'll also throw out a couple of sites our research lab runs. MovieLens is a long-running personalized movie recommender that has a reasonably active, large userbase and that has generated a lot of research in collaborative filtering and HCI. More specific to the movies-and-wiki theme, we've got a fairly new site WikiLens that combines community addition of content (based on PhpWiki) with ratings and recommendations. Neither is a replacement for IMDb but many people have found MovieLens to be darn useful and we're hoping WikiLens will take off as well.