The Core

We're developing a site for a client and they interested in displaying some facts about popular cities and countries, number of residents, economy, weather, currency geography, politics etc.

Anybody have any clues where we can get them this data - preferably using api's or other webservices?

Thanks RC! Will dig into it and see if there's an api or data provider somewhere.

Freebase is worth a mention, but takes a bit to get your head around it.

You'd probably want just a section of the dataset for the location stuff. Last time I took a copy you could download their entire raw format or some flatfiles that can be put into DB's relatively easily. Looking at their site just now, everything has been shifted and download is temporarily unavailable.

Essentially it's a scrape of wiki "fact boxes" + a bunch of other sources.

examples:
http://www.freebase.com/m/04jpl
http://www.freebase.com/m/02m77?any=%2Fcommon%2Ftopic