Descriptions of US Federal datasets

Data.gov claims to increase the ability of the public to find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the US Federal Government.
It provides descriptions of the datasets (metadata), information about how to access these datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets.
Further data catalogs will be added. Federal, Executive Branch data are included in the first version.
More: The access point:
www.data.gov
A commentary:
scienceforseo.com/../shiny-new-dataset

Backup Traps

During a full backup some backup software look like they are backing up your directories but they are not. When you point the program to the folder it then writes a list of the files and only backs these up.
Similarly CD burning jobs in some programs work from a file list not a folder list. There is a big difference because each file added to a directory is often more valuable than one of the existing files.
Now that you know, test your "backup and burn" assumptions. Especially if you backup using a full, not an incremental backup.

Who did what when?

Problem: What work has been done on a particular project.
Solution: Check the files created on the PC. Hopefully they were all placed in identifiable places, like their project directory.

1. Use Command Prompt (\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories) to extract the information to clipboard. Right click the [c:\] button for the menu. Type the drive letter you want, then navigate the directories using the command:
cd (then paste the rest of the directory copied from the Windows Explorer address bar).
Use cd.. to move up a level.
2. Paste into MSWord and replace the sometimes fixed widths with tabs (macro for this)
3. Select all text for table - copy & paste into Excel
4. Sort by Date and time
5. Find files with contiguous dates to identify time spent on the project.