NEWSLETTER #6

April 1996

this issue edited by Jon Reeves

Welcome to issue 6 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 newsletter@imdb.com.

It looks like the schedule for the newsletter will be about every six weeks. Expect future issues to be somewhat larger than this one.

See the further information section at the end of this file for more information about The Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Contents

• IMDb does Oscar
• Reaction to status change
• Plot summaries wanted
• Privacy policy
• IMDb in the news
• Web server changes
• Database statistics
• Future developments

IMDb DOES OSCAR

Like everyone else, we covered the Oscars in real time; we had several winners updated before they began their speech, including the by-category pages. The main sites at us.imdb.com and uk.imdb.com were set up as mirrors, giving users a choice if one was overloaded. And our pages remained intentionally low on graphics to keep the reload times fast; some users told us that this made us faster than the "official" site.

Of course, all names and titles were linked to their full database entry, and we have a complete list of Oscar winners, giving you a depth of coverage you couldn't find anywhere else.

REACTION TO STATUS CHANGE

This is just really a quick thank you note to everyone who supported us during the recent changes at the IMDb. The reaction to the change was overwhelmingly positive and in fact we received only four negative messages. The data addition rate is also holding up well and last Friday we received a record 44,000 entries for the week.

As you've no doubt already seen, the web interface continues to improve with new features and an even faster search engine. Once again all only possible because we have direct access to and own the servers.

Watch out for further improvements over the next few months.

PLOT SUMMARIES WANTED

The plot summary list is creeping along at ~150 new summaries a week, but I want more!

Listed below are some of the more popular and best (high votes) movies in the database that still don't have plot summaries.

No prizes for guessing which block got the most votes, and which got the highest. Highlander 2 gives it away...

Due South (1994) (TV)
Enfants du paradis, Les (1945)
Scrooge (1951)
Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)
Arizona Dream (1993)
When Night is Falling (1995)
Toto le Heros (1991)
Last Waltz, The (1978)
Funny Bones (1995)
Brief Encounter (1945)

Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986)
Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
Little Women (1994)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
Night Shift (1982)
Johnny Dangerously (1984)
Battlestar Galactica (1978) (TV)
Wolf (1994)
Erik the Viking (1989)
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995)

PRIVACY POLICY

If you submit a plot or a biography, you can leave off your E-mail address and we won't give it out; we'd like you to at least include your name, but you can be "Anonymous" if you want. If "Anonymous" is good enough for the best-seller list, it's good enough for us.

From time to time, we get E-mail from people listed in the database or their agents or relatives. All E-mail addresses, and even the names of the people we correspond with, are strictly confidential (unless there's an explicit request otherwise).

Finally, we promise never to give your name or E-mail address to an advertiser unless you explicitly request it.

IMDb IN THE NEWS

Just a few of the traditional media outlets that have mentioned us lately:

The New York Times. CNN. Il Giornale (Italy). TIP Magazine (Berlin). The Wall Street Journal. PC Week. Premiere Magazine (France). News from Brazil (Brazil/US).

We've also won several new awards. See the whole gallery here.

YELL for the UK Best (nomination). Project Cool sighting for March 30. Warren's Weekly Worthy Sites, week of March 31. MicroSoft Network weekly pick. c|net's search.com top pick.

WEB SERVER CHANGES

As part of the IMDb's recent move to a professional status, two new www servers were introduced (us.imdb.com and uk.imdb.com).

Since September 1993, the primary www site had been at the University of Wales College Cardiff's Computer Science Department, and for most of that time the IMDb had been consuming all available bandwidth and CPU time on the departmental web server. Being the first, Cardiff proved very popular; over the years, well over 50 million requests were made to the site and in excess of 30,000 links made by users and other service providers.

Shortly after the IMDb switched on its two new servers, the Cardiff mirror began a shutdown procedure. Owners of many of the most followed links from outside the IMDb were contacted in order to get links updated. With the reduced load, the Cardiff server is now responsive enough to once again be used by the Computer Science department for local services.

In the coming months, the IMDb plans to invest advertising revenue to fund more mirror sites to replace the mirror sites at Mississippi State University (www.msstate.edu), LEO (www.leo.org) in Munich, Germany and the Australian mirror (ballet.cit.gu.edu.au) at Griffith University, Brisbane. These sites are unable to continue mirroring the IMDb because of their University status. The three sites will be phased out gradually.

Within a week of announcing our new sites, they were receiving over a quarter of a million requests daily. The popularity of the IMDb in the USA suggests that we can easily treble our US hardware capacity and fill it quickly.

DATABASE STATISTICS

This is a regular section giving information about the current size and growth of the IMDb. We receive between 20,000 and 35,000 additions every week from users all over the world.

   Number of filmography entries:   962,248
   Number of people covered:        309,805
   Number of movies covered:         68,522

   Size of the database (Mb):            79

Recent milestones:

• Over 10,000 costume designer entries.
• Over 10,000 production designer entries.
• Over 14,000 movies now have complete cast lists.
• Over 20,000 editor entries.
• Genre entries for over 30,000 movies.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

This is a regular section listing some 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 materialize because the original volunteer decides not to proceed.

• full support for accented characters (ISO 8859-1) without losing people that can't type them. Implementation in progress.
• a list giving the language(s) of the original release.
• a locally installable MS-Windows interface to the database is under final testing for those of you who want to reduce your phone bills!
• enhanced awards section for the database covering more international festivals, national film institutes etc.
• general support for alternate titles in languages other than English and the language of the original country.
• a movie recommendation service that will use your vote records to suggest other movies you might enjoy. Initially available via an E-mail interface. Time to check you're up-to-date with your voting!

Academy Awards and Oscar are registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.