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Diamond Road

Every year 24 tons of diamonds are teased from the heart of the earth. Once mined they begin their year-long journey through the 'pipeline,' a vast network encompassing five continents and a diverse cast of characters. By the end of their journey these tiny bits of carbon will have made multi-millionaires of some and virtual slaves of others.

Boring deep into the diamond world, Diamond Road seeks to understand the multiple meanings this object has for a few of the fascinating people who are part of the diamond pipeline - international prospector, impoverished miner, child cutter, celebrity jeweller, smuggler, high-end dealer. Interwoven with their stories is the determined pursuit of one industry leader to bring fairness and transparency to this secretive world. What results is a multi-layered portrait of a stone which is steeped in a history of intrigue, conflict, love and hope.

Diamond Road Online is a leading-edge synthesis of documentary, online community, and the Web 2.0 techniques of Collaborative Filtering, and Personal Recommendations - the exciting techniques behind popular sites like Flickr, Amazon.com and Del.icio.us.

Users create online profiles that launch them on a vibrant community exploration of the global diamond trade. Using a custom designed set of client tools, they can move effortlessly through the stories in a guided experience or take a more active path and explore the Diamond Road universe using our Recommendation Engine: intelligent software that analyzes what they have already seen, what other users have seen and rated, and recommends what they should see next.

Users can choose to follow a favorite character, find out more about a particular theme, or sit back and let other users or DRO tell them a tale. At any point, they can become an 'editor' of the story landscape by creating, commenting on, and sharing content sequences.

Diamond Road Online harnesses the power of technology and community to build an interactive documentary that learns from each user and is defined by the community.