geoJSON for Nepal - Districts and Development Regions

I was planing to visualize some data over the map of Nepal. After some time spent on Google, I came across some good JavaScript libraries that could do this. They were Kartograph, Google Maps API. Then, I came across Leaflet, it is a simple open-source JavaScript library for interactive maps. It is a lightweight JavaScript library with plenty of interactive and visual features. It also is one of the many libraries supporting geoJSON.

GeoJSON is a format for encoding a variety of geographic structures. So, if you are looking for an accurate geoJSON for Nepal - I have posted it in my github repository which is compatible with leaflet.js: https://github.com/mesaugat/geoJSON-Nepal

The repo contains two geoJSON files:

• nepal-development-region.geojson (For Development Regions)
• nepal-district.geojson (For Districts)

Both of these are valid and accurate geoJSON you'll find for Nepal. These geoJSON contain different properties which can be removed by using QGIS if you don't want it. The QGIS tool can also generate geoJSON from KML. KML is the native format for Google Maps and Google Earth. There is also a library available to convert KML to geoJSON written by Mac Wright available on github: https://github.com/tmcw/togeojson

If you want to make your own geoJSON then this website: http://macwright.org/edit-geojson/ will help you do so, also made by Mac Wright.

Enjoy !

Comparison of Communication Status in South Asia and Nepal

Well, it's been quite a while that I've not written some stuff or shared something. Recently, I went to "Open Nepal Hackathon 2013" where developers and designers sit for some hours to create a useful product at the end of the day. The basic idea of the program was to use open-data to build something useful.

Open-data is the data that is free(open) to everyone so that they can use it, know about it and let others know about it. It is kind of a open-source concept. Open-data is available in open formats such as CSV, JSON or XML. If the required data is available through a website or a PDF or a DOC then it can be scraped to make it open format so that anyone can use it. Open-data is basically required by data journalists, developers to manipulate and make use of it to make different visualizations, services or even applications. Example of some open data could be census, GDP, etc.