The European Union has much stricter customer data restrictions than the U.S. Even Microsoft couldn’t skirt those regulations, as reported in EU Business: The US software giant Microsoft has agreed to make substantial changes to its Passport system of accessing…
Unicode is one of the most significant achievements in computing over the past decade. It’s just a shame that so few people know about it. What the heck is Unicode? Unicode is a universal character encoding. In other words, it’s…
Today, Office Depot launched its Spanish language Web site. It’s just a matter of time before Staples follows suit. I found this interesting tidbit in the press release: According to the United States Small Business Administration, there are an estimated…
An article in the LA Times describes the phenomenal success of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ memior (the first of three books): “Vivir Para Contarla” (Living to Tell the Tale). The big news is not that the book is selling wildly in…
It has been roughly a year since RealNames imploded, bringing down with it a service that had supported the resolution of multilingual domain names. The implosion was a big blow to Verisign because it was making money off the registration…
When asked about his company’s plans for 2003, Kirk Pond, the CEO of Fairchild Semiconductor, talked mostly about Asia, specifically China. His company already does 70% of its business in Asia; he calls China “the next big thing.” Fairchild is…
Is American entertainment a bellweather for other American products around the world? American multinationals must certainly hope not, based on this recent article. It seems that American studios are no longer making “must see TV” for markets around the world.…
When the world loved America, American multinationals could do (almost) no wrong. Nike, Coke, McDonald’s and the rest could sell their goods practically anywhere in the world and make a nice profit. But now that the world’s love affair with…