Indiepix launches world’s largest collection of downloadable independent films

  • Powered by state-of-the-art topic maps software from NetworkedPlanet
  • Offers unique film exploration and navigation capability

Indiepix, a world leading online service created for the independent film community,

has launched one of the most comprehensive independent film resource on the Internet, powered by state of the art navigation software from NetworkedPlanet, the leading vendor of information management tools. Visitors to www.indiepix.net will now, for the first time, be able to discover, explore and purchase more than 3,000 independent films, as well as learn about new films, all classified by Indiepix’s movie experts. Indiepix will give 60 per cent of the profit/revenue from purchase straight to the film-maker, to help support the independent film industry and encourage the production of more movies.

Indiepix is a rapidly expanding organisation – it plans to grow its film library to over 10,000 within the first 18 months of the launch. The service is powered by NetworkedPlanet’s TMCore information management system which provides the state-of-the-art interactive services for customers. NetworkedPlanet’s powerful topic mapping navigation system will enable an increasing number of independent film enthusiasts to find out more about their favourite genres or directors, as well as access rare or hard-to-find films. The new Indiepix service will support independent film-makers by giving 60 per cent of the profits/revenue from every sale through the site back to the film-makers, which will help encourage the development of future projects as well as maintain existing ones.

“This project is designed to open up new opportunities for exploring the world of independent film,” commented Bob Alexander, President of Indiepix. “The new Indiepix site will provide an avenue for independent films to get greater recognition and we will contribute a majority of profits back to the film-makers themselves. It is important that the site is easy to navigate, and that it can recommend new films, directors and actors that visitors may not have heard of – this is by far the best way to encourage greater participation in the independent film industry. NetworkedPlanet understood our objectives from the outset, which is a major factor in why we are now able to launch the most comprehensive resource for independent film on the Internet.”

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 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 website.

“This project is a great example of how topic maps can be used to enhance online navigation,” commented Kal Ahmed, Founder of NetworkedPlanet. “The system functions 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 now does 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.indiepixfilms.com

</a>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