Swivel is a site that is all about data. You can upload your data and have it made into graphs, you can find datasets, comment on them or rate them, or you can compare different datasets that have been uploaded to the site. As the site itself explains, it’s “a place where curious people explore data – all kinds of data.” Techcrunch recently featured a helpful article giving an overview of the site and how the data- and graph-curious can get the most out of it.

One of the most viewed graphs featured on the site as of today is entitled “Wine and Violent Crime” to show that “In the last 30 years or so wine consumption and violent crime in the US have been moving in opposite directions. Let’s all get a glass and get less violent.” Another graph shows the battle of the search engines of Time Warner, AOL, Ask, Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft.

Just in time for the holidays, Swivel announced that they had switched over to use Creative Commons licensing, the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license to be exact, in response to user feedback about the site. They have even set up a discussion group to discuss some of the legal issues surrounding data. It’s still in “preview” mode but it already sounds like a data- or copyright-wonks’ dream!