data.gov goes live

The US Federal Government is putting some more of its data out there, at data.gov. Their full list of raw data at the time of writing comes to 47 "catalogs" with formats including XML, CSV, KML, ESRI, and a few RSS feeds. It is not very extensive at the moment compared to existing sources, but a good start. The site is clearly separated into the raw data catalog on one side, and the tools they have for exploring the data on the other. This means that third-parties could come along and make better tools with access to the same data, benefiting everyone. Within the data commons, we're following a similar model, where the data commons "repository" holds all the data, and our own online tools and API will not be privileged in any way. If someone can come along and visualize our data better than we can, then that would be great!