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Freebase, the first product of semantic web company Metaweb, is an open, semantically marked up database of information that we called one of the "10 semantic apps to watch" last year. With $57.4 million in funding, a smart team, and a tech legend in Danny Hillis at the helm, Metaweb is considered to be one of the most serious players in the Semantic Web space. Yet the company's efforts to date have been met with skepticism. Particularly, people have asked how is Freebase different to Wikipedia? Jamie Taylor, the Minister of Information at Metaweb, spoke at the SemTech 2008 Conference that took place in San Jose last week in an effort to dispel some of that skepticism.

Blist, the cloud database application, which we covered back in March when they launched into their public beta, just received a big update yesterday. The update addresses, for the most part, stability and performance issues, but it also includes some new social features as well.

Earlier this month, EMC released their findings regarding the digital universe in a publication entitled "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe." Some of the research focused on mind-blowing figures - like the 281 billion GB size of the digital universe or the predicted size of the digital universe by 2011, nearly 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 exabytes). However, what really peaked our interest was information provided on your "Digital Shadow," that is, all the digital information generated about an average person on a daily basis.

Cloud database app, Blist, has recently added some new features to their online tool, including a social network built around Blist users and the databases they create, as well as features that make the online database application even easier to use than before, like the ability to import CSV data or share databases with friends.

The new site at UN Data allows anyone to access the United Nations Data Access System. This online, easy-to-use database was created by the UN in order to provide current, relevant, and reliable statistics to the whole world, for free. Using UN Data, you can access statistical information on populations, demographics, trade, commodities, agriculture, employment, the environment, industry, education, tourism, and much more.

LongJump, a company based out of Sunnyvale, California, has introduced a Database-as-a-Service (DaaS) product that offers you an easy way to build a database application backend for your website and business. With LongJump, database setup is simplified - you no longer need to worry about server provisioning, redundancy, backups, patching, or any of the other IT complexities involved with running your own servers. Instead, you just sign-up with LongJump, set up your data structure and permissions, and connect your web services.