Digital World

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4. Huge resource of public data, including the 1000 Genome Project, an attempt to build the most comprehensive database of human genetic information and NASA ngIf: ticker ’s database of satellite imagery of Earth.

5. Data.gov http://data.gov The US Government pledged last year to make all government data available freely online. This site is the first stage and acts as a portal to all sorts of amazing information on everything from climate to crime.

6. US Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/data.html A wealth of information on the lives of US citizens covering population data, geographic data and education.

7. European Union Open Data Portal http://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/ based on data from European Union institutions.

8. http://data.gov.uk/ Data from the UK Government, including the British National Bibliography – metadata on all UK books and publications since 1950.

9. The CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ Information on history, population, economy, government, infrastructure and military of 267 countries.

10. Freebase http://www.freebase.com/ A community-compiled database of structured data about people, places and things, with over 45 million entries.

11. Gapminder http://www.gapminder.org/data/ Compilation of data from sources including the World Health Organization and World Bank covering economic, medical and social statistics from around the world.

12. The BROAD Institute offers a number of cancer-related datasets. http://portals.broadinstitute.org/cgi-bin/cancer/datasets.cgi

13. Pew Research Center offers its raw data from its fascinating research into American life. http://www.pewinternet.org/datasets/

14. Million Song Data Set http://aws.amazon.com/datasets/6468931156960467 Metadata on over a million songs and pieces of music. Part of Amazon Web Services.

15. Socrata is another interesting place to explore government-related data, with some visualisation tools built-in https://www.opendatanetwork.com

There are more open data source in this article http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/02/12/big-data-35-brilliant-and-free-data-sources-for-2016/#1be736f67961

Q8- Why did Apple never did much market research before the Iphone or Ipad?

I think they see market research useless when they are creating something revolutionary. While they are creating something new, customer preferences and survey cannot help their creation process.