Jen Stirrup is pleased that Microsoft is bringing back open datasets:
Nearly three years ago, I complained bitterly about the demise of Windows Datamarket, which aimed to provide free, stock datasets for any and every purpose. I was a huge fan of the date dimension and the geography dimension, since they really helped me to get started with data warehousing.
So I’m glad to say that the concept is back, revamped and rebuilt for the data scientists today. Azure Open Datasets will be useful to anyone who wants data for any reason: perhaps for learning, for demos, for improving machine learning accuracy, perhaps.
Go check it out.