When building Big Data apps, you need to conduct a test run with someone else’s data before you put the software into production. Why? Because using an unfamiliar dataset can help illuminate any flaws in your code, perhaps making it easier to test and perfect your underlying algorithms. To that end, there are a number of public data sources freely available for use. Some of them are infamous, such as the Enron email archive used in court hearings about the malfeasance of that company. You can read more of my article that appeared today in Slashdot here.