While creating web applications, finding data we need can be a very difficult process. Whether it is a signup page that requires all countries/cities or a "restaurants directory" which needs the data of restaurants.

Factual is a website which can be a quick solution for reaching data. It is a free-to-use platform where anyone can share & mash open data on any subject.

There are lots of different data tables provided like:

• Video Games & Cheats
• Popular Books of the 1990s and 2000s
• Hiking Trails
• American Idol Finalists
• Beer Qualities
• & much more

It is possible to view the data in a table form, make changes, filter or export as a CSV file. Also, all data can be reached via Factual API which we’ll probably be seeing lots of applications built around it.

hurl is a free web-based application which enables users to send custom HTTP requests & view the responses.

It can seem unfunctional at first but for anyone who is working with APIs, the service is a great time-saver to easily see the responses & develop accordingly.

It is possible to add any number of headers to the request, define user-pass for HTTP authentication & set the request to follow redirects.

Optionally, you can sign-up to save the requests-responses for future comparison.

URL shortening services, with the popularity of Twitter, has a very wide usage, probably more than anyone had expected few years ago.

These services not only makes URLs shorter but more readable & trackable. Also, some offer features like password-protecting, custom URLs & more.

Although there are very succesful services like TinyURL or bit.ly, you may still want to have your own as these services can be shut down one day like tr.im (a huge service that is closed yesterday – update: tr.im re-opened which was a good example for the stability risk of these services). Or, you may be asking for more/custom features.

Here are 7 open source & free URL shortener scripts to create your own:

Shorty

Shorty is a free URL shortener script built with PHP & MySQL. It comes with an admin interface where links can be edited/deleted & number of clicks can be viewed.

YOURLS

It is a set of PHP scripts for running a custom URL shortening service.

It can be private or public, custom keyword URLs can be picked, counts clicks & has an API. Best of all, a Wordpress plugin integrates it with your blog & links are shortened automatically.

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Open Web Analytics is an open source framework that developers can use to integrate web analytics into any application.

It is built with PHP & besides the standalone usage, it has built-in support for WordPress, Gallery & MediaWiki.

OWA comes with 2 APIs:

• PHP: which makes it easier to integrate into any PHP application
• JavaScript: for usage in non PHP pages/websites

It has powerful tracking/reporting features like heat maps, multiple websites, Google Maps integration, RSS/Atom subscription tracking &standard ones like:

• page views, visits, and unique visitors over time
• unique, new, repeat visitors over time
  
• Click-streams – view the actual click-stream of each visitor
• Click Tracking – Track where exactly on a web page users are clicking and view clicks by browser type
• Click Heat Maps – view a heat map of where users are clicking on your web pages
  
• Visitor Aging – understand the age of your repeat visitors.
• Canned and Custom Time Periods – generate reports using pre-defined reporting periods or custom date ranges
• Refering Page Analysis – View the title, anchor text, and surrounding text of inbound links from refering web pages
• View visits by user agent
• Track entry and exit pages
• Track pages by custom page type

The frameworks uses other open source resources like Open Flash Chart or PHP Mailer & requires PHP 4.2.2+ with GD enabled to run. 

UIzard is an open source development tool for creating web applications on the web.

It has built-in support for various project types like:

• standard web applications
• Google API-based widgets/gadgets
• mobile web applications

User interface elements can be controlled with drag’n drops just like a desktop IDE & UIzard’s built-in editor has support for code-highlighting.

With an instant preview feature, the outputs of the design & code can be seen easily.

P.S. The application is currently in beta status & can be a little unstable.

IP Location Tools is a free web service that helps you detect the country/city of an IP number.

It can be used in 2 ways:

• with API (no installs required)
• by downloading the geolocation database

Although downloading the SQL database & running it on our own database servers is much more flexible, keep in mind that there are 1.4 million records in it.

The geolocation database is updated regularly (once a month)

IP Location Tools offers another nice service: fraud detection. Again with an API request, with the zip code you submit, system compares the location of the IP and the area where zipcode belongs to. Can be very helpful, specially for e-commerce websites.

As we all experience, every hosting account or server sometimes fails, no matter how good the hosting company is. And, this can be accepted as normal when it is within the limits.

For better reacting to the downtimes, analyzing the health of the web application & the environment it is hosted on, uptime monitoring is a working solution.

phpWatch is a free PHP uptime monitoring script that can watch unlimited number of websites and send notifications via e-mail or SMS (for US phones).

With an Ajaxed interface, new monitors & notifications can be easily configured. And, once the cron job / scheduled task -that pings the servers in desired time intervals- is set, the script is ready to go.

phpWatch also offers an API which lets other applications to query the monitored services, get the statistics and use the notification system for sending SMS and e-mail alerts.

qTip is an unobtrusive jQuery tooltip plugin with a list of nice features.

It has:

• rounded corner support without use of any PNGs
• very flexible tooltip pointers are as they can be positioned in several locations
• 5 ready to use stylish themes & you can create your own easily
• support for not-overlacking. How close the tooltips are, they will preserve their stacking order
• ready to use effects: fade, slide, glow & custom ones can be created

The plugin is cross-browser & tested in all major bowsers. It is also very well-documented.

qTip has with a scripting API that allows you to easily extend the functionality through a variety of optional callback methods & attributes. So, you can even extend qTip by writing plugins for it.

AJAX APIs Playground, a web-based application that runs on Google’s App. engine, enables you to learn & test APIs of Google products.

APIs included are:

• Visualization
• Search
• Language
• Blogger Data
• Maps
• Earth
• Feeds
• Calendar Data

All functions of the APIs have well-commented examples that you can modify & run.

Besides playing with the codes, you can login with a Google account & save the code you created for future use.

FlashFlickr PhotoGallery is an open source photo gallery built with Flex 2 / AS3.

The application enables users to browse your Flickr pictures, see your sets, tags and notes within your website from a good looking interface.

The gallery has a location map feature built with Yahoo AS3 libraries that shows the location of the image (if mentioned) using Yahoo maps. This requires a Yahoo API key.

It also has the Flickr authentication for Flickr registered users. This way, registered users can also add comments, tags (if allowed) to the images (Flickr API key needed).