Have you ever wondered about the colors of the flag of a certain country? How about the capital of a state or the phone code? I am sure you did. And I also know how unpleasant it is not to find this type of information. Fortunately, I have found a software that deals with this type of information.

Country Codes is a specially designed software that displays information about the codes of over 250 countries and will also give you an image of where the country is located on the map. I know it sounds good, but wait till you discover the other options it comes equipped with.

The software is a development of iZoX ZONE and - contrary to my initial belief - it is absolutely free. Free of charge, free of malware and adware. The application is supposed to work on all Windows Operating Systems, but unfortunately, all I could test it on was Windows XP. Anyway, I am sure that you are interested to know if it works on the much awaited Vista. I cannot help you with this information yet, but as soon as I find out I will make the necessary adjustment.

The interface of the application is totally out of shape as it does not look too good. In the upper part of the screen there are some buttons that look as if they were cut off in order to fit. The main application window is divided into two separate sections. The one on the left is intended to display all the information related to the codes of the selected country. Yes, a country has more than one code as I initially thought.

Thus, there is the TLD code (the two-letter country code assigned by IANA as Top Level Domain in Internet Address), the ISO Alpha-2 (International Organization for Standardization) code, the ISO Alpha-3 (World Bank Codes), the IOC (International Olympics Committee) code, the ISO Currency Code (abbreviation from the name of the state's currency), dialing code, NDD (National Direct Dialing) code, and the IDDD (International Distance Direct Dialing) code.

I am surprised myself to learn how many codes are assigned to a country. And all of these are available in Country Codes.

The right half of the main application window contains additional information about the selected country. Thus, you will be given the capital of all major countries, and their position on the world map (latitude and longitude in degrees and minutes). This information on the right can be edited by the user and the data will be saved in a separate database which can be removed if the information proves to be totally erroneous.

In special cases, the user can edit the Dependency of field and type in there the state that certain country depends of. Also, the general location on the globe can be modified by clicking the Edit button. The feature I most liked was the World Clock Server one that displayed the time of the selected country and if you have changed the default city it will show the time of that particular city. Additionally, you are displayed the GMT and the system time on your computer.

In the Options menu found at the bottom of the application window the user can set the software to display its icon in system tray and reset the database (it will remove the "userdb.ini" file which stores the modifications made by the user).

World Map button will display the map of the world and pinpoint the location of the selected country. If you think the data is not accurate you can edit the location by clicking the Edit Position button and setting the desired location. Some additional features require the use of an Internet connection. You can see the country profile on National Geographic or take a satellite look. You can change the country using the search button in the right lower corner of the map.

The best feature I bumped into while using this software was the IP2Location conversion tool. It works very nice and accurate and it is enough to paste an IP address into it and be served the country it belongs to.

The Good

The application is free and works fine. The information it provides is valuable enough for all users and the IP2Location tool gives you the desired answer fast and easy.

The Bad

The interface needs a face lifting as it looks pretty bad. Adding some colors would improve its looks.

The Truth

Very nice and useful program. And taking into consideration that it displays the GMT time from World Clock Server, you can set your clock by it.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: