I’m getting caught up after a very long trip and came across a few interesting items worth mentioning:
* From the law firm Baker & McKenzie:
As of March 1 2004, it will become possible to apply for the registration of domain names containing special Hungarian characters (á,é,Ã,ó,ö,o,ú,ü,u). However, this will only be useful for Hungarian language websites aimed at Hungarian readers.
* Tex Texin offers an excellent resource on “currency internationalization”: http://www.xencraft.com/resources/multi-currency.html
* Software firm PeopleSoft signed a deal with localization firm SDL for “on demand” translation across all 24 country Web sites. While I haven’t spent much time reviewing the sites, it appears that PeopleSoft is wisely using a consistent global design across countries. I hope to speak with them to learn more.
* And also from Baker & McKenzie:
Afilias, a global provider of Internet domain name registry services, will launch the first registrations of German domain names with umlauts in the ‘.info’ domain at the end of February 2004 (a few days before the German domain registry services are expected to launch). The move will allow users of the German language to register words containing umlauts (ä, ö, ü) without having to refer to the ASCII code for “ae”, “oe” and “ue”.