Note: I’m getting paid to write this review through ReviewMe. I have received a ton of review requests to date through the service and have denied most of them, but iBegin Source is just one that I would’ve written about anyway so I didn’t find any harm in accepting — additionally, I know this is one service that will come in very handy to some of the readers.
With the growth of the web, we’ve seen a lot of forms of data that were once worth thousands if not millions become available for free to regular consumers (one of these, for example, is Google Earth). iBegin Source is a such new serivce which plans to give out up-to-date and processed business data in the US for free on a non-commercial use.
With nearly 11 million listings in their database which they claim has been de-duped and cleaned, users can download the data for free if they plan to use it non-commercially, or pay $1,000 per sate or $40,000 for the entire U.S for commercial use (which, they state would be worth $500,000 elsewhere). The data is gathered to them through a wiki and businesses can submit their own selves through their website as well.
I think iBegin Source is a valuable resource and centrainly one of the prime examples of what can be achieved by the web and the freedom it has given to consumers to access information. I’m eagerly waiting to see more services like this come forward.
