The OpenGeoportal

These open geoportals have been around for a while - basically led by the folks at Tufts, MIT, and Harvard. The idea is to create an open 'clearing house' for authoritative geospatial data that are scattered all over cyberspace as part of state/local/federal agencies, colleges/universities, museums, libraries, etc. I'm not sure this has really taken-off  - and may never will - but have a look at Opengeoportal.org, Open Geoportal 2.0, and a recent review by Esri's Joe Kerski.