Welcome to Photius.com

My growing network of web sites currently consists of millions of pages, interspersed among several of my domains (Geographic.org, Occupationalinfo.org, Theodora.com, and others). It is a labor of love, and it reflects my passion for all things international. It developed over time, in response to the innumerable e-mails I received from students, teachers, researchers, parents, children and others with questions about a particular country or the world. Other subjects followed. Please keep in mind that, when I started it, there was no Wikipedia, no Yahoo and no Google.

Having lived on four continents, studied for what seems a lifetime and worked in a wide variety of organizations -- from Wall Street to transportation, from telecommunications and manufacturing to government -- there came a time for my middle age lifestyle change. Others went from an executive career to a farm. I went into developing and publishing informational web pages.

Various components of my web sites were developed over a period of many years, beginning in 1995. Consequently the look and feel of different pages varies greatly. Additionally, the pages were hosted in different domains* of mine for whatever economy and expediency was compelling at the time.

Yet, in spite of the lack of uniformity of appearance, the data are presented in a relatively consistent manner. Furthermore, a visitor who explores them will see how the site -- and my own skills -- evolved, from the nostalgic, text-based, primitive look of old, to the fancier presentation of early 21st century web.
By the webmaster: Photius Coutsoukis

The most popular site on photius.com consists of thousands of pages of international rankings of countries, in 526 ranking categories, including annual updates of most data, going back to 1989. Data comes from a variety of sources, a big part from the CIA World Factbook, inlcuding CIA data for which the CIA does not provide ranking tables (about half of their data).

I was the first to produce country rankings from the CIA World Factbook data, and the CIA website followed my example later (I was also the first to publish the CIA World Fact Book on the Internet, from data I obtained from the CIA, with the CIA following a year later, as well as the first ever web pages with images of flags of the countries of the world, with the CIA following, as well as the first "Photos of Countries" website, with the CIA again following my example).

Annual data is supplied for several years, also in spreadsheet format, Google translation into Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Russian, Hindi, Arabic and Portuguese, and a mobile version. I also produced International rankings by country, as part of my annual update of the Countries of the world website, with Wikipedia following my example.

IATA codes of commercial airports around the world.

IATA codes of cities and ports around the world.

Cronicle from the 1995 formation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.

Chronicle of the formation of the Eurasian Economic Community, from before they had their own website.

Chronicle of the formation of the Shanghai cooperation organization, from before they had their own website.

Chronicle of the formation of the Black Sea Naval Cooperation Task Group, from before they had their own website.

Chronicle of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative.

Chronicle of the G15 summit group, from before they had their own website.

Cached copy of a now defunct 1996 page by Davyd Smith, President of EGuide, listing my first website (Immigration Superhighway) among the first to actually make money on the Internet.

My own selection of information about various popular religions from other websites.

Life of Saint Photius, by Despina Stratoudaki White.

My radio appearances

My old movie and book reviews published by Amazon.com.

My old Greek/Turkish Cyprus Peace Initiative.

Brief definitions of terms commonly used in the energy industry.

Definition, material properties, natural history, diamond industry, and glossary, plus links to diamons job descriptions of related occupations and articles about diamonds.

Old archive of LOB country studies, including those no longer available in the LOB website, e.g., Greece.

A handy guide to USA government publications, with their respective publication codes, supplied by the US Government Printing Office.

And here below is the look of my original home page, circa 1995:

Welcome to my Home Page This is the look of my original (mid 1990s) home page, very dated and full of nostalgia for the pioneering days of the web. Click on the links below to visit some of my many web pages: | Countries Of The World | Country Rankings | DOT Job Descriptions | | My Film, Computer, Video and Book Reviews | Radio Appearences Audio | | HTML Colors | Photios | Gray's Anatomy | Geographic.org | | Newspaper article about my THUS Peace Initiative. | Photos of Countries | | The world's most ancient successful internetpreneur | HTML Color Chart |