[oscilloscope]

Be sure to use the recently released TopoJSON world map, though it doesn't have comprehensive islands.

http://bl.ocks.org/4180634

TopoJSON is a variant of GeoJSON that supports shape simplification, map coloring, cartograms and other topology-related features.

https://github.com/mbostock/topojson

For small geographic features like tiny islands, try the new d3.geo.tile plugin with a high-resolution tileset.

http://bl.ocks.org/4162068 https://github.com/d3/d3-plugins/tree/master/geo/tile

TileMill can create tilesets from shapefiles and other formats. It can export GeoJSON for D3 too.

http://mapbox.com/tilemill/

More examples:

http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock http://bl.ocks.org/jasondavies http://bl.ocks.org/tmcw

[novalis]

Thank you for the links oscilloscope, jit resources. Not having Malta in there was killing any european biz intel graph.