Free Data Sources For Madlib Sites

Posted 1020 days ago - Free Stuff

So you've read Blue Hat SEO's awesome write up detailing how to use Madlib Sites to your advantage, now what? Over the course of a few posts, I'll provide some additional information to compliment Blue Hat SEO's post. Clearly, this post contains a list of free resource candidates to choose from for building your Madlib Sites.

Government Data

Government data sources are great simply because the content is usually: accurate, concise, and there's an abundance. For starters, bulk.resource.org makes the following available via http, rsync, BitTorrent, and ftp.

    • Commerce Business Daily
    • Public Safety Codes
    • Common Utilities
    • U.S. Copyright Database
    • The Judiciary
    • SEC EDGAR Database
    • General Accountability Office
    • Government Printing Office
    • Internal Revenue Service
    • National Technical Information Service
    • Patent Full Text Database
    • Robotic Guidance
    • Smithsonian Institution
    • Trademark Database

Wikidumps

Anyone looking to build a Madlib site probably already knows Wikipedia releases their entire database dumps to the public. Grab them here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps

GeoNames - Country Dumps

Geonames.org has a collection consisting of country related data. The usual: Latitude, Longitude, Elevation, Population, Timezone, Country Code, Capital, Area (in sq. km), Top Level Domain, etc. Start loading this into your Madlib arsenal if you're looking to target the world :] http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/

The Obvious: Google

The advanced search operator filetype: is very handy for our situation. The query: mysql dump filetype:sql produced over 9,000 results at the time of writing. Get creative with this query and there's no telling what you'll come across. If you're interested in csv data, try filetype:csv, instead. Prefixed with anything that comes to mind, Google will usually provide a generous heap of information. You'll have to filter through some of the results to find the good stuff, but the effort will pay off in the long run.

Oddity Software

In addition to their non-free databases, Oddity Software's generous collection of free data sets are another must-have for any madlibber. If you haven't already, visit http://www.odditysoftware.com/free_lists.html to acquire an excellent base to start from, or make a strong addition to the archive :D .

myDataMaster.com

The generous collection at http://mydatamaster.com/free-downloads/ provides the following types of data dumps in sql/zip (available via http):

  • US Street Suffixes and Abbreviations
  • US State and Territory Abbreviations
  • US Embassies
  • Famous Birthdays
  • Mixed Quotes
  • World Cities and Languages
  • Articles on various topics
  • Medicare Coverage Details
  • US Nursing Homes
  • US Medical Suppliers
  • Home Business Articles
  • Database of Random Facts
  • Education/College Articles
  • Complete Bible Website

The next few posts will provide some examples (with code) to build a fully functioning madlib site with our new library. I'm not a professional coder, so don't expect anything glamorous.

So, where do you get your data?

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collapse John # @ 2009-12-02 04:17:52

Thanks for these, hopefully going to be put to good use once I brush up on my PHP

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