2025-07-02 World Dashboard is ready :)

Published 2nd demo project

World Dashboard has been added to NNP

It’s a simple mobile friendly(-ish) tool to find data about a country. The background color shift is roughly aligned with the actual time zone.

Basic features

Search Country

Or click on a map

Time zone based on clicked location

Portugal stares at you

Learning & future TODOs

Fake News

Reliable information is expensive.

E.g. Below code fetches news heading from (free-tier) GNews API with keyword “Japan”:

try:
        api_key = os.getenv("GNEWS_API_KEY")
        url = "https://gnews.io/api/v4/top-headlines"
        params = {
            "q": country_name,
            "lang": "en",
            "max": 6,
            "token": api_key
        }
        response = requests.get(url, params=params)
        response.raise_for_status()

        articles = response.json().get("articles", [])
        trimmed = [
            {"title": a["title"], "url": a["url"]}
            for a in articles if a.get("title") and a.get("url")
        ]

        return jsonify(trimmed)

And if it does not find any, it returns click baits and PewDiePie from random news source.

So, I decided to give up and replaced it with good old wiki summary for now.

More Polishing ideas (which I won’t get around to)

• Include city data for better search capability
• “Random Country” button
• Learn wikiQuery to fetch stats such as population
• Smooth out the background color change
• Red marker to be opaque when behind globe

Known bugs:

• “Today” in the public holiday is using UTC instead of browser local time.
• The search field does not get updated when user clicks on another country
• Mobile control (show/hide country info) needs refinement
• Animation for jumping to country sometimes spins the globe instead of taking the shortest path.