Indiepix and NetworkedPlanet Launch World’s First Knowledge-Based Navigation Database For Independent Film

Indiepix and NetworkedPlanet Launch World’s First Knowledge-Based
Navigation Database For Independent Film

Today, I listened in on a press conference given by Indiepix and NetworkedPlanet where they announced the launch of Discovery, “the first knowledge-based navigation of the world’s largest database for independent films.” On the call was Bob Alexander, Indiepix President, and Kal Ahmed, Founder of Networked Planet. Some examples of films in this new system are Jennifer Venditti's Billy the Kid and Michael Tully's Cocaine Angel. Below is a press release about this new venture sent to me today with all the details.

New York, US and Oxford, UK - October 17, 2007- IndiePix, the ultimate resource for independent film fans and filmmakers, and NetworkedPlanet, the leader in topic mapped file management and search systems, today announce the launch and availability of the world's largest intelligent database of curated independent films that uses state-of-the-art web technology to power the service. Underlying the presentation of over 3,000 titles, Discovery enables film lovers to discover and explore the world's best films from independent filmmakers, as well as order and download films of interest on the IndiePix website (www.IndiepixFilms.com).

Discovery is a revolutionary, intelligent navigation system. It allows the IndiePix team of film experts to manage information about a film and to add information based on their expertise and the system creates relevant, content-based links between films. The graphical display based on this process is designed specifically to expand user choices by helping create intelligent pathways through the large and growing world of independent film.

“The process expands choices in ways that are unexpected and opens up paths for exploring IndiePix's rapidly growing catalogue of film titles,” says Bob Alexander, president, IndiePix. "There are a variety of so-called ‘recommendation engines’ that suggest films a consumer may like, but we suggest choices that are related to a consumer’s starting point. “

The Discovery process is powered by NetworkedPlanet's TMCore information management engine, a topic mapping system that identifies, calculates, and manages the relationships among the films in the database in an enterprise database. In the IndiePix implementation, the TMCore engine is managing well over 200,000 relationships among 3,000 titles, and the number of relationships expands exponentially as new films are added.

“TM Core is a server platform for enterprise knowledge and information management applications; it stores and manages 'topic maps' of the entire content of the IndiePix website. This map is then the basis for driving the Discovery display,” says Kal Ahmed, co-founder, NetworkedPlanet. “TM Core delivers a detailed index of information resources across systems via a single unified information portal, and IndiePix’s implementation led to the development of special algorithms to weigh and manage the data as part of the display process.”

The Discovery process can be launched from the IndiePix website at www.indiepix.net/discovery.

A flash presentation summarizing the Discovery process from a users point of view will be available soon on the corporate information page at the IndiePix website at www.indiepix.net/info/press.