There are so many APIs out there now—it’s still not standard practice to create an API when building web apps, but we’re not far off. But when you compare the availability of APIs with the availability of real time data sources, APIs seem to be everywhere while there is barely a real time source to be found.

And this is disappointing, because there are loads of services for which real time data would be so much easier and more applicable to the task: Flickr’s recent activity method, Digg’s and Technorati’s search APIs, the BBC traffic feeds, and virtually everything offered by the Twitter API…

In fact, I’m only aware of one really useful source of real time data: Sixapart’s excellent Livejournal/Typepad update stream, where you can connect to their server and receive data as it happens. Livejournal users the world over are generating content constantly, and as soon as they publish their data it goes out on the feed. I typically find that you see 2-3 posts per second, which is pretty good for a community many think is a bit out of vogue.

I’d love to know if anyone has come across any other real-time data sources that are freely available.