Over the last seven days we've seen lots of coverage of events: MIX08; the Politics Online conference; and best of all, MashMeet DC. The compression of so many things occurring in so short a timeframe, however, in some ways leads us to pass over fresh launches and new updates - sometimes mistakenly, sometimes not so. Which we regret. Kind of. (We kid.)
One of the announcements of a few days past that we didn't shine light on which I'd now like to talk about, is something you may find interesting. Or you may not. It really has naught to do with any newfangled social networking tool or spiffy AJAX-ilicious piece of software. It's nothing like that. Rather, it's simple reference tool very much non-open-source in nature, lacking in any kind of visual allure, and to a good percentage of you, will be a downright bore. Nevertheless, we review.
UNdata is the site's name, and as you might guess, it's very much affiliated with that cheerful, fun-loving roundtable known as the United Nations. The site was highlighted today on MoMB. In short, it is a database open to the public that claims to search "over 55 million records" in the UN catalogue, with more to be added in the future. That's a lot of of white paper, huh? Yeah, not too shabby.
There isn't too much to harp on about UNdata. It's a database. What more can you say? It's basically akin to Wikipedia. Only the information is neither user-submitted, nor user-edited. And you won't find profiles on the stars of Silicon Valley. Or anything that doesn't have to do with Agriculture, Education, Employment, Energy, Environment, or Industry, or anything in between. Without going into excessive detail, it's essentially all about moving UN-specific documentation to the Web in order to convenience those that may not have the inclination or wherewithal to do a hard search for the stats they need. Our presumption is that there are a lot of people in that group, to whom easy access is key to "getting things done" - whether those things be high-school or college term papers or government- or business-level research projects.
That purpose alone makes UNdata very useful. Not useful to all, of course. But useful to enough to be a smart investment. Next time you need figures pertaining to the first-, second- and/or third-worlds, take a peek at the servers at UNdata.
User comment: By: PaulGlazowskiAndrew, The name's Glazowski :-) And thanks!
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