looking for websites that add value to pre-existing datasets

July 3, 2007 5:57 AM

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.

posted by primer_dimer to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

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.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:12 AM on July 3, 2007

Best answer: 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
posted by Hates_ at 6:23 AM on July 3, 2007

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).
posted by Leon at 6:46 AM on July 3, 2007

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.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:03 AM on July 3, 2007

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

Deadbase
posted by Afroblanco at 7:03 AM on July 3, 2007

freedb.org for CD data
posted by Leon at 7:06 AM on July 3, 2007

Best answer: ChicagoCrime
posted by tmcw at 7:26 AM on July 3, 2007

Best answer: Nationmaster
posted by camcgee at 7:57 AM on July 3, 2007

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.
posted by londongeezer at 8:50 AM on July 3, 2007

Lots of music and movie sites use AMG for data.
posted by mkb at 10:08 AM on July 3, 2007

Political data crunchers, such as the campaign money sites or TheyWorkForYou, which is so much better than the official UK Hansard site.
posted by holgate at 10:11 AM on July 3, 2007

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

Lots here.
posted by genghis at 3:44 PM on July 3, 2007