Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
Sometimes it’s difficult to see a revolution when you’re standing right in the middle of it. Which is how I still feel sometimes when it comes to web globalization. Web …
UPDATE: The 2017 Web Globalization Report Card is now available. More than ten years ago I set out to create a report that benchmarked global websites. I looked at languages …
From Afrikaans to Zulu, the evolution of Google Translate is one of Google’s greatest success stories that few people fully appreciate. Perhaps because Google is reluctant to release usage data …
My latest post for client Pitney Bowes includes tips for creating “world ready” visuals. An excerpt: Don’t Send the Wrong (Hand) Signal Gestures are culturally specific and, while some gestures …
I’m optimistic about the year ahead. I base this optimism in part on discussions I’ve had this year with dozens of marketing and web teams across about ten countries. While …
I enjoyed this vision of the future of an airline website (by Fantasy Interactive), particularly this map of fares and destinations: Why haven’t other airlines embraced this vision yet? Probably …
This screen is from a website advertising two new top level domains in Cyrillic. Here are the two domains and what they represent: .САЙТ (Website) .ОНЛАЙН (Online) Two other domains …
Here’s my latest post for client Pitney Bowes: Any company with global aspirations cannot afford to ignore the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. It’s a region that includes more than two billion …
When I read government arguments in defense of the NSA, an oft-repeated line was: We’re not targeting Americans. We’re targeting foreigners. Foreigners. I really dislike that word. And I’m sure …
Starbucks currently has 19,000 locations of which 11,000 are in the US. According to this Wall Street Journal Q&A (reg. required), Howard Schultz remains optimistic about Asia: Outside the U.S., Starbucks …
So I just spent an hour upgrading my iPhone to iOS 7. My first thought was: Boy, these icons are ugly. And there’s this strange mix of text-only buttons and …
So your company is successful on Facebook. And Twitter. And now you want to expand your social reach into China. Well, you can pretty much forget Facebook and Twitter, because …
Imagine if, every time you wanted to visit a website, you were expected to type in letters from a foreign language, or worse, an entirely foreign script, such as Arabic, …
I begin this post with a question because I don’t have an answer. A book making news these days is The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler. It’s about Hollywood’s active self-censorship …
Not exactly breaking news, but Apple Store is now live in Russia. I love the art they used for the launch: The global gateway that Apple uses for its online …