Will unfortunate name keep Freebase from world domination?
Freebase.com will be a public service free database which anyone can contribute to.
How do people use Freebase.com?
Freebase.com allows anyone to contribute, structure, search, copy and use data, through either the Freebase.com web site or through application program interfaces (APIs). Freebase makes it easy to put data in and pull data out for any commercial or non-commercial purpose.
Freebase alpha was launched on March 9th 2007 by Metaweb however invitations are slowly being given out to the select few. Thank you for the invitation to participate, it’s quite a privilege. Not since hypercard have I been so impressed by a piece of software; ok, I know, I say that every week. If you thought Wikipedia was cool just wait until Freebase joins the game.
Sure it’s cool to see your web presence show up in Google search results, but you never really have that much control over what shows up or where it shows up and there’s no one to complain to. That is until Googlebase beta showed up a couple of years ago (launched Nov. 2005). “Post it on Base, find it on Google”. Sure Googlebase is neat with its bulk upload and API, but somehow it’s old school when compared to Freebase.
Freebase is incredibly easy to use. You don’t really need to know about databases. If you’ve used Flickr or Facebook then you should pretty much be a wiz at Freebase. I find it seriously addictive and addictive is good if your site is powered by human brains.
In the mean time, while Freebase alpha is brewing into beta, DabbleDB is a wonderful database hosting environment which also has a free commons plan. DabbleDB is quite a different beast than Freebase. It is also very easy to use but it assumes that you would want to build a database from scratch. Where as Freebase is like a huge library of pre-built database structures waiting for you to populate. And, if the existing structure isn’t quite right then simply change it to meet your needs.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Wikipedia’s semantic mediawiki extension… woof!
Unfortunately there wasn’t a big red circle around it so I completely missed it.