Comments on: looking for websites that add value to pre-existing datasets

Question: looking for websites that add value to pre-existing datasets

primer_dimer — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 05:57:53 -0800

Looking for examples of websites that use pre-existing data (vague question I know; more details inside)

I'm spending a lot of time at the moment building a website for a manually curated database, and I've become interested in the idea of a "genre" of websites that are useful because they provide an interface to some large collection of information that would otherwise be unwieldy. For example, there are massive numbers of recipes freely available online, but a site that lets you search by ingredient, etc. makes them much more useful. I guess what I'm talking about are database-driven websites where the content is derived from some pre-existing source rather than added by users (as per digg, flickr, Metafilter et al.) Can anyone give any examples, either of this type of site, or of existing collections of data that might be a good candidate for building a site around if I were to try building one as a project? I appreciate that this isn't a very well defined question (You could claim that google search falls into this category, as its 'content' is generated by indexing pre-existing sites) but I'm hoping that the answers will help me think more clearly about it.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:12:26 -0800

Bioinformatics databases (too numerous to link to; search Google) let you search through collected data. Some allow you to score the search results for cross-referencing against, for example, drug targets.

By: Hates_

Hates_ — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:23:38 -0800

I believe the Gapminder webapps pull from publicly available information. But as to where they directly get the information from and how they stored/accessed it I don't know.

Gapminder Tools

By: Leon

Leon — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:46:54 -0800

Sites that use the eBay and Amazon web services to provide additional functionality. UPC/ISBN databases. Electoral Roll (in the UK). Flickr API. Anything from the US gov (eg the zipcode database).

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:03:02 -0800

You can check out ">Deadbase for all your Grateful Dead setlist needs.

Also, Pandora draws its data from the Music Genome Project, in addition to user ratings.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:03:37 -0800

wow, how the hell did that happen. Here, let's try this again :

Deadbase

By: Leon

Leon — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:06:59 -0800

freedb.org for CD data

By: tmcw

tmcw — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:26:20 -0800

ChicagoCrime

By: camcgee

camcgee — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:57:18 -0800

Nationmaster

By: londongeezer

londongeezer — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 08:50:46 -0800

artprice.com and similar services log auction data from all over the place so you can, for example, search auctions worldwide for works by picasso.

By: mkb

mkb — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:08:28 -0800

Lots of music and movie sites use AMG for data.

By: holgate

holgate — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:11:55 -0800

Political data crunchers, such as the campaign money sites or TheyWorkForYou, which is so much better than the official UK Hansard site.

By: genghis

genghis — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:44:18 -0800

The Google magic word you're looking for would be 'mashup'.

Lots here.