The TIFF schedule was finally announced on Tuesday, officially kicking off a frantic week where ticket package holders like myself must sort through hundreds of films to make a handful of picks for what to see this year. As per usual, the official Toronto International Film Festival web site has the full schedule online but as has become de rigeur in recent years, a number of unaffiliated groups have created user-friendly ways to navigate through and organize all the data.

TIFFR
Mina Mikhail and his friend Ryan from fightingtheboss studios have created TIFFR (pictured above), a web application that makes it simple to shortlist and create an itinerary for films you might be interested in seeing. Your schedule can then be printed, shared with friends or exported to Google or another online calendar. Check out how it works.

TIFF Facebook Application
Roy Pereira and his team at the Shiny Agency have created a Facebook Application that makes it easy to browse films and plan your TIFF film-going within the Facebook environment. The app let's you differentiate whether you already have tickets to a film or just would like to go; but the real value here is that you can easily check to see if any of your friends are planning to attend any of the same screenings. And like anything on Facebook, you can make comments and actions that shows up in your activity stream.

Film Fest Bingo
Filmmaker and freelance designer Jacob Niedzwiecki has a solution for anyone who wants to have more fun when deciding what to see at this year's TIFF. His Film Fest Bingo card is meant to be used as a companion to the festival's programme guide and the idea is to fill in the squares on the card as you come across descriptions of films that include phrases like luminous, masterwork and enfant terrible.

Not sure what to see at this year's festival? Check out our preview of TIFF 2009 and stay tuned for more of our picks of what to see.