Follow up to CIA ends publication of its popular World Factbook reference tool – Manuel Longo: “When the CIA World Factbook faded as a free, machine-readable source, a swath of public-interest country data was effectively orphaned. Bamwor rebuilds it as open data: 261 countries and 5.2M cities, in four languages, as CSV/JSON with a permanent DOI (CC BY 4.0). It also adds nine composite indices the Factbook never had — economy, education, healthcare and more — scored across 244 countries.” Links include Datasets, DOI, and a Brief. But what does Banwor mean, I asked? Longo: “Honestly, when I came up with it around 2010 it didn’t stand for anything. I just liked how it sounded, and the phonetic combination stuck with me. Over the years I kept trying to give it a meaning that matched what Bamwor actually became (the whole site, then and now), and in that search I landed on a backronym I now pretend was intentional: Borders, Areas, Maps, Worldwide, Open Reference. Suspiciously on-brand. It probably stuck because the sounds (b, m, w, o, r) are soft and easy to say in almost any language, which turned out handy now that the site runs in four. So it started as a sound I liked, and grew into a meaning along the way. 🙂” (via check other links).”

• For decades the CIA World Factbook was the world’s free public reference for country data. When it faded, developers, journalists, and students lost a common source. Here is what was at stake — and how we rebuilt it as open data.