Websites of interest

• FlowingData

Data repositories and APIs

A number of websites make data available for download, either through an end-user interface or via an API aimed at developers.

• Freebase -- wide variety of community-sourced data
• Infochimps
• Numbrary
• UN data sources
• ITU Statistics on ICT usage
• World Bank
• Sunlight Foundation
• Data.gov (US federal government data)
• NYC data
• MBTA Transit Data
• San Francisco data
• Google n-grams corpus
• Security breach database

Data opportunities

These sources haven't made themselves as immediately accessible as the repositories. Nonetheless, they can be queried systematically to contruct data sets of interest.

• Bing Search API
• Google Insights for Search
• DoubleClick Ad Planner
• Alexa
• Google Keyword Tool
• Weather Underground
• Facebook
• Twitter

Exemplary papers and projects

• Propublica Investigations
  • US autopsy rates (methodology)
  • Access to advanced classes in public high schools (methodology)
• National Obesity Comparison Tool
• Crowdsourcing black-market jobs