How many of you have gone to Wikipedia for "the gist" of a topic?

Raise your hands, people... ok that makes close to 85,000 of you.

Well... the "next big thing" in the web info arena (according to me) is, ready for it?

Data - more accurately... Smart Data. Raw numbers with contextual meaning.

The web is the battle field ... a tug of war over content.

The combatants in this war are: Free vs. For Profit. 

This includes us...Bloggers love Free. Real Estate Agents require commission.

So... the Blogger/Agent Math Formula is this:

freely available information + experience + "know how" = commission

There have been a myriad of articles posted in this social network regarding free stuff...

...I've posted a few myself... they include the topics of:

• Free web hosting
• Free stock photography
• Free photo processing
• Free blogging platforms

But where are the free data sources?

One of the obvious ones is wikipedia. It shows up high in every web search.

I've posted before about free government sources for data... problem is, these sites tend to look like something reported by the government. They tend to be sleep aids.

That's changing.

A new crop of web-smarties are creating mashups. They take public information ... mix in some smart database magic... and create, in essence, a wikipedia for data.

Here are a few of them:

• Freebase : This is an open source (that means free) depository of public information. It's excellent.
  
• Numbrary : This is like a library for people who love numbers. And you know who you are. I'm one of you.
  
• Infochimps : I'm tempted to not describe it... it has "everything about something". It's awesome!

Each of these need to be visited to be appreciated.

I just want to leave you with one that I've been using lately: Wikinvest

Rather than send you to the front page, let's go to a link about the housing market.

Like Wikipedia, you'll be able to see a "neutral" explanation about a topic. It has the blogger math I spoke of earlier: With the application of know how and experience collaborators distill the vast amounts of information on the subject into something more easily digested. Contributors are also invited to take a "bearish" or "bullish" stand on the matter.

For the investment minded it's a real gem. 

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