Some of you may have checked out the www.data.gov web site and didn’t find too much usefulness out of it. After all, most of it is just raw data. This works for those who are specifically looking for data of that type, but for the rest of us isn’t very useful.
Something that is useful however are the available widgets from that site. These are simple single-purpose "apps" which can be easily inserted into your own web site or blog. Or even if you don’t have a web site or blog, you can bookmark these for a quick reference when you need them.
Accessing the widgets quickly and easily is done by doing the following:
1. Go to www.data.gov.
2. Click on Catalogs. Looks like this:
3. On the next page, click on big blue Tool Catalog tab. Looks like this:
4. On the far right, click on Widget so that all widgets are shown first. Looks like this:
5. For each listing you will see a brown gear icon. This is a clickable link and will take you to the appropriate widget page. Looks like this:
The example I’ll show here is the NOAAWatch Web Widgets.
Each of these have HTML code ready-to-use in your web site or blog. Or you can simply bookmark it for a quick reference.
Remember, feeds are useful too!
If you use an RSS reader such as Google Reader, instead of sorting by Widget, sort by Feeds. There are many data services available you can plug right into your feed reader to keep informed.
If you don’t use Google Reader, Firefox has Live Bookmarks and Internet Explorer 8 can also read feeds in the browser. Simply click on a feed link, choose to subscribe then place the bookmark wherever you wish.
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