So with great interest I read Marten’s blog post on the new Data.gov “Geo Viewer”. Marten’s got a ton of reasons why its great and why it fails, but for me it didn’t work at all. I just get this FAIL message below:
I mean maybe I could figure out what went wrong, but since Data.gov gives me no details about datasets I just move on.
Of course it could be one of the many problems Marten showcases, but I will say the “share this” works great. In all seriousness putting a “preview” map on Data.gov isn’t going to change a thing about how worthless Data.gov is for actually finding data. You can of course put your comment in the little box at Data.gov and I’m sure they’ll forward it on to “top men”.
Of course this brings up a huge point with how big a failure Data.gov has been. Just going to the “Ideas” page for Data.gov, you are presented with a big middle finger.
What would I like Data.gov to look like in July 2010? No really, I totally trust the government to do right by data. Nothing says that nobody from the Data.gov crew looks at that Ideas page more than that simple statement. Rather, it is more of an exercise to make citizens feel part of the process, distracting them from actually doing something about it. Maybe it would be better to just go through ESRI to get things fixed.