[OSGeodata] The CIA World Factbook in shapefile form

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 07:52:31PM -0700, Putler, Dan wrote:
> A I started working on this layer to use in showing GIS concepts to  
> my 12 year old son. However, I quickly realized this would likely be  
> of interest to both the Public Geodata and Education committees at  
> OSGEO. Moreover, it seems like a good first contributed data  
> offering, complete with the issues of how to handle metadata and  
> licensing issues. The data are derived from the VMAP0 political  
> boundary layer (which Markus Neteler provided valuable support in  
> helping me to create). Parts of the VMAP0 political boundary layer  
> seem to be in the public domain, while other parts seem to be under  
> (a very liberal, non-commercial use) license from ESRI. In any event,  
> if you are interested, the url to get this layer is www.pagcgeo.org/ 
> world_factbk.zip.

This data is now available in an OpenLayers instance at:

http://freemap.in/world/

Clicking on the map should generate a WFS query, which will then
populate the list on the right hand side with data, showing what
countries are near your click. This support could easily be expanded to
be more comprehensive, for example, including all the attribute
information, but I haven't done this yet primarily because this is a
beta version where some attributes seem to be not quite in shape yet :)

Feature requests welcome. Code (such as it is) can be considered public
domain -- there's nothing in there that isn't easily reproducable, so
please don't trouble yourselves with licensing crap :) 

Cool dataset! Thanks!

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer