USA.gov Embraces Web 2.0 Tools

The federal government web portal USA.gov has a page dedicated to Government 2.0 resources. The Government 2.0 page links to Web 2.0 tools from USA.gov and  other federal government sites. With these tools, USA.gov hopes to engage the public,  improve access, and put a face on  government information and resources.

Here are just a few of the Web 2.0 tools you can find:

Government blogs list.

RSS feeds -  Library of RSS feeds from across the government

Twitter.

Wordle Word Cloud –   See the 75 most popular search terms on USA.gov.

Web Chat – Live personal assistance available weekdays from 8:00 AM until 8:00 PM Eastern Time

Side note: Do you find the name Goverment web 2.0 a little clunky? You’re not alone. Mashable recently asked its readers to help rename “Goverment 2.0″. Here are the results.

Internet fun: Wordle

Wordle is a site where you type in text to create “word clouds”. A word cloud, or text cloud, or tag cloud, is a pattern that displays the most frequently used words larger and brighter than the lesser used words. To create a cloud just enter words or import tags from your del.icio.us account. I typed newsresearch in the del.icio.us box, and viola this appeared:

Pretty cool. I can certainly see using this tool in a presentation. Wordle also has a customizing feature so you can play around with different layouts, fonts, and and colors.