While watching cricket or any other sports, if you don’t know which teams are in the ground, you look closely to their uniform or the cheering crowd holding flags in support of their country, and so you recognise the countries playing in the field.

Not only for this, one should always have some basic information about the countries of the world and for that one doesn’t have to be a geography enthusiast; two websites Flagpedia.net and Flags of all Countries prove to be great sources to find out important information about the countries of our world.

Let’s explore Flagpedia.net first. The site is neat, clean and quite eye-catching, with the main menu in the right panel while the basic information in the centre of the homepage. A user can choose a country by continent, alphabet, organisation or currency, and after selecting, the country’s basic information appears with its capital, population and total area in the centre. Also, a user can locate the country in the world map given below the information. The website also has an interesting section of quiz where one can test their knowledge about any country.

The second website Flags of the countries has a little bit more information than the former. Though it has not the catchy look of Flagpedia, it has some sections which will be very useful for some users. For instance, after selecting the country from the long list, a user can go through categories like ‘Geography’, with the details of location, area, climate, terrain, etc; ‘People’ with everything related to population; ‘Government’ which I think is the most interesting category as it tells about the government body, judicial body, parliament and political parties, etc.

‘Economy’ is all about currency, employment rate, etc.; ‘Transportation’ gives info about railroad, highways, marine, ports and airports, etc.; ‘Communication’ is about telephone system, radio and television, and lastly, ‘Defence’ tells about the arm forces and their capacity.

Both websites have a bundle of information about countries but the text is not so lengthy as to bore the readers. Explore the world on Flagpedia.net and www.theodora.com/flags.html

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 2nd, 2015