IndiePix orders NetworkedPlanet topic maps technology to power new ground-breaking film website

  • Interactive ‘Compass’ navigation tool will link data on over 3,000 of the world’s best independent films, set to increase to 10,000
  • Revolutionary IndiePix.net website will allow film lovers to discover, explore, and purchase films hand-picked by movie experts

NetworkedPlanet, the leading vendor of information management tools and products, has announced an order for its TMCore information management solution from IndiePix, the world’s leading independent film provider, to power its ground-breaking new website, IndiePix.net. The new website, set to become the most comprehensive independent film resource on the internet, will allow film lovers to discover, explore, and purchase thousands of the world’s best independent films – all organised and classified by IndiePix’s team of movie experts. NetworkedPlanet will provide the intelligent topic maps-based navigation system to help create a revolutionary new ‘Compass’ discovery tool to enable users to browse the film library.

IndiePix is a rapidly growing company, and the new TMCore information management system, that offers a state-of-the-art interactive service to its customers, will play a major role in its expansion on-going plans. Currently its site lists over 3,000 selected independent films from around the world, and IndiePix will increase this figure to around 10,000 over the next 18 months. The Compass navigation system will enable an increasing number of independent film enthusiasts to find out more about their favourite genres or directors, and to access rare or hard-to-find films.

“The focus of the project is discovery – opening up new avenues of thought and ideas for exploring independent film,” commented Bob Alexander, President of IndiePix. “Hollywood films launch with advertising and marketing campaigns that often run into hundreds of millions of dollars, whereas independently produced films don’t have that luxury. The Compass tool will help reduce that advantage and level the playing field so that film enthusiasts are able to discover interesting and exciting films that don’t have huge publicity budgets. NetworkedPlanet understands our objectives very well, and the new TMCore solution will be at the heart of our business strategy.”

Each film on the site will contain metadata attachments that allow IndiePix’s in-house team of film experts to insert all sorts of information – who directed it, which country it was filmed in, the reviews it had at release – based on their expertise and evaluation of it. The Compass system will then use TMCore to create relevant links between them, so that when someone is browsing any one film online, it will suggest other links based on relevance and similarities. Once all of the films have this data attached to them, the resulting knowledge base can be easily and intelligently navigated by anyone using the Compass interface.

“This project is a great example of how topic maps can be used to enhance online navigation,” commented Kal Ahmed, Founder of NetworkedPlanet. “The Compass system will function in a similar way to a shopkeeper in a clothes store – a customer might have selected a blue shirt, so the shopkeeper suggests they look at similar shirts, as well as cuff-links and ties that match it. IndiePix.net is going to do the same thing for people who are shopping for independent films.”

TMCore is NetworkedPlanet’s server platform for developing enterprise knowledge and information management applications. The TMCore server will store and manage topic maps of the entire content of a website. Each topic contains metadata which holds information about the file, links to related documents and links to other topics, creating a map of knowledge. This map can be browsed or searched by end-users to find information via key concepts. The result is a detailed index of the resources across a number of systems via a single unified information portal.

About IndiePix
Founded in 2004 in New York, IndiePix is a world leading shop and online service created for the independent film community. It is a group of movie experts, information professionals, media arts specialists, and most importantly, committed supporters of independent film. Born out of the desire to cultivate connections between emerging filmmakers and their potential audiences in a non-traditional, non-exclusive manner, IndiePix offers tailored packages for filmmakers who wish to make their works available for purchase on DVD.

For more information, please visit www.indiepix.net

About NetworkedPlanet
NetworkedPlanet was formed in 2004 to develop topic map processing tools and applications specifically for the Microsoft .NET framework. The company’s first product, TMCore05, was released in January 2005. NetworkedPlanet provides a suite of tools and products to organise and structure the access to information to make it easier to locate and more relevant to end-users. It provides a range of tools scaling up from work-group information management to full-scale commercial websites and enterprise content management systems.

For more information, visit: www.networkedplanet.com

Kal Ahmed
Founder
NetworkedPlanet Limited
Tel: 01865 811131
kal.ahmed@networkedplanet.com

Louise Sambells
ThePressOffice,
PR for NetworkedPlanet
Tel: 01780 721433
lsambells@pressoffice.targetwire.com


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