Do you have a recommendation on the best way to implement a 'loading' gif while the connector retrieves the data? There is a noticeable wait while this happens. Instead of a blank page, I'd like to show my animated 'loading' gif, then removed it when the data populates the page.

Hello Todd,
Of course - there are behaviors that can control this integrated into the HTML5 Data Bindings - you can show a div with a loading animation while the data is loading and hide it when it is successfully loaded.
Just click on the Behaviors button inside HTML5 Data Bindings.