A dataset collection, curation and interface website that is currently in a public beta.
Summarized in part as:
Search, Browse, Explore
You can browse through the catalog to find datasets based on their category, or search via keywords. From each dataset’s homepage you can quickly find useful information about its provenance, licensing and a snapshot of useful metrics such as when the dataset was last updated.
Using the Explore tools will get you deeper into the dataset: drilling down into detailed documentation and sample data.
Datasets and APIs
Every dataset in Kasabi has a range of core APIs listed right on the dataset homepage or discoverable through the search and browse tools. Choose the API that best supports what you need to do, whether its a search over the data or more complex queries. Subscribe to an API to immediately gain access using your API key. Your dashboard lists all your subscribed APIs, and each has a useful reference card of parameters and response formats available from its homepage. Need more detailed docs? We have those too.
Contribute APIs
Can’t find an API that matches your application? In Kasabi, you can contribute your own using our API building tools. These tools let developers create customised RESTful APIs that capture ways of querying or navigating across a dataset, producing results in a variety of built-in and custom formats. All contributed APIs are listed in the catalog, along with automatically generated documentation, allowing them to be shared with the Kasabi community.
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The Contribute APIs looks quite interesting, particularly since all the datasets are stored as separate graph databases.
A bit more from the FAQ on custom APIs:
A custom API allows you tailor access to the dataset. This custom access will then be suited to your particular application or user community. By creating and maintaining a custom API over the data, you won’t be constrained by the default APIs provided by Kasabi or the data owner.
By allowing the developer community to share its skills in ways other than just creating applications, Kasabi lets us broaden the definition of data curation to cover APIs and access as well as the data itself.
Only fifty-nine (59) datasets as of June 4, 2011, with a definite UK flavor but I expect that will grow fairly quickly. The usual suspects, the CIA World Factbook, BBC, New York Times, DBpedia, are all present. More than enough information to make topic map interfaces interesting. The principal advantage of topic map interfaces is the ability to specify a basis for a mapping, thereby enabling other researchers to follow or not, as they choose.