Learning from the not-so-global web sites
I’ve highlighted the top 25 global web sites in the 2011 Web Globalization Report Card. Now it’s time to focus on the other end of the spectrum — the 25 …
Business globalization
Byte Level Books is looking for authors
I’m pleased to announce the formation of a new publishing imprint dedicated to “books with a world view.” To date, we’re published two books — The Savvy Client’s Guide to …
Walking through jelly
Just because a global company mandates one “global” language doesn’t mean that everything will run smoothly. English is typically the global language selected, which is nice for those who were …
Upcoming Webinar: The New Global Enterprise
On March 15th I will be participating in a half-day online forum sponsored by the American Marketing Association and Localization World: The New Global Enterprise: Core Competencies for Localizing Marketing Communications …
Global by Design turns 1,000
In 2002, I launched this blog. It was the first blog devoted to web globalization. In fact, I don’t believe there were any blogs devoted to translation either at that …
Local by design; global by accident
When I first visited Japan, I was struck by the range of local products made by the Japanese subsidiary of Coca-Cola, like Georgia Coffee (in a can, no less). This phenomenon is …
The world according to FedEx
I must warn you that if you visit this FedEx microsite you might lose an hour or so viewing the many data maps. Above is a view of Facebook users …
The Top 25 Global Web Sites of 2011
I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2011 Web Globalization Report Card. This year, we reviewed 250 web sites across 25 industries. The web sites represent nearly half of …
The next Internet revolution will not be in English
This visual depicts about half of the currently approved internationalized domain names (IDNs), positioned over their respective regions. Notice the wide range of scripts over India and the wide range …
The decline of foreign markets and the rise of local markets
An article in The Wall Street Journal talks about the American “two track” economy — in which US companies that sell globally are doing much better than those focused only …
Philips CEO on expanding globally
Last week I said I’d love to see more profiles of global-minded business execs and, sure enough, the Journal delivers. Here’s an interview with the Philips Electronics CEO Gerard Kleisterlee. According …
Going Global Gracefully
A great quote from an interview with Tarun Khanna and Krishna G. Palepu, authors of the new book Winning in Emerging Markets: Multinationals based in developed countries as well as …
Twittering in Tongues: How companies are going global with Twitter
Over the past six months, Twitter went from mostly serving people based inside the US to mostly serving people based outside of the US. Today, 60% of Twitter’s 105 million registered …
Nike -> Brike
From today’s Wall Street Journal: Nike Inc. aims to boost annual revenues more than 40% to $27 billion over the next five years by adding new stores and rapidly expanding …
The best global airline web site: American Airlines
As I prepare to hop on a plane to Europe, I’d like to focus briefly on the airline industry. I should preface this post by saying that I find “meta” …