To Dell and Back
Over the years, Dell has developed what is now one of the best global Web sites. The Dell site made our top 25 list in the 2005 Web Globalization Report …
Business globalization
Thinking Globally; Offending Locally
The Wall Street Journal reports that Nike has unleashed a poster campaign in Singapore that creates a graffiti-like appearance in bus shelters. According to the article, the “page-size posters featuring …
Happy Thanksgiving from Air New Zealand
How’s this for a localized promotion? I just received a Thanksgiving email from my friends at Air New Zealand: I’m touched, really. More important, I’m reminded of the importance of …
Will Der Polarexpress Play in Deutschland?
Would you believe that the Tom Hanks’ film The Terminal turned a profit? I wouldn’t have believed it, not until I read this Wall Street Journal article (paid subscription required). …
Budvar vs. Budweiser
I am from St. Louis, where a tiny little brewery known as Anheuser-Busch (AB) is headquartered. Needless to say, I’ve followed the growth of the company for years now and …
Thinking Local in China
China, as this Wall Street Journal article notes, is no longer a place companies go just to make things. Thanks to its booming economy, China is now a place to …
iTunes Japan in 2005
According to News.com, Apple is launching iTunes for Japan in March 2005. As I reported a few weeks agoiTunes is already localized for 12 European markets. Japan, however, will not …
Google Taking Blogs Global
Google appears to be doing for blogs what it did for search engines. According to this InfoWorld article, Blogger, which is owned by Google, is going to be localized for …
Debunking Local Myths In Asia
According to this New York Times article Asians have one more thing in common with Americans — love for the ol’ credit card. The consumer credit business is booming in …
eBay Goes Dutch
According to CNET, eBay is purchasing Markplace.nl for $290 million in cash. Founded in 1999, Marktplaats.nl averages roughly a million listings. This purchase gives eBay an instant presence in the …
Xbox Globalization
Here is an interesting Q&A with Peter Moore, global marketing chief of Microsoft’s Xbox. They have offered a subscription-based, online Xbox service for a couple years now and we find …
All Lucky Numbers Are Local
Every culture has lucky and unlucky numbers. In the US, you’ll be hard-pressed to find the 13th floor in New York City. According to CNN, someone in China paid $215,000 …
Apple iTunes Globalization, Continued
About a month ago I wrote about how iTunes had currently been localized for three markets. My how time flies. The last I checked the iTunes Music Store now supports …
Business Beyond Time Zones
Fast Company features a short article on the challenges of managing global teams. This is a real challenge that global Web teams face. Conference calls must be shuffled constantly to …
Language Weaver Scores More CIA Cash
Language Weaver, a San Diego-based developer of machine translation software, scored additional funding from In-Q-Tel, the VC arm of the CIA (yes, even the CIA likes to gamble). It appears …