API access to the Department of Commerce Census Bureau Data Sets

In a great leap from FTP to API JSON access, the US Census Bureau has moved to "improve access to data and encourage innovation."  You can learn more about the offering by looking at the Access Data with the Census API.  In the past, you would have to find the dataset in need and then download it from their FTP server.

In order to access the API, you will need to sign up for a key.

The website does a great job at explaining what is available via the API, along with samples and example queries to help you get started.   If you are looking to augment some additional marketing information into your current Supply Chain Data Warehouses or other analytics and visualization tools, this is a great resource to tap into.  

Pull in social, economic or demographic data from the American Community Survey (ACS)  such as Households with children under 18 by congressional district

http://api.census.gov/data/2011/acs1_cd113?key=<insert your key here>&get=DP02_0003E&for=congressional+district:*

["DP02_0003E","state","congressional district"],
["74867","01","01"],
["72310","01","02"],
["74383","01","03"],......

I am looking forward to seeing some of this data in action!