I was given a review copy of No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends, which I read over the weekend. The authors are Richard Dobbs, James Manyika, and Jonathan Woetzel — all directors at the McKinsey Global…
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 visual buttons. Some of the apps feel like a step…
Here’s my latest post for client Pitney Bowes: For companies in search of global growth, emerging markets are hard to resist. But like the California gold fields of the 1850s, the promise of riches doesn’t always result in riches. That’s…
The latest data from IDC show the sharpest decline in PC sales on record. From the release: “Although the reduction in shipments was not a surprise, the magnitude of the contraction is both surprising and worrisome,” said David Daoud, IDC…
With Mongolia gaining approval for its new internationalized domain name (IDN), there are now 30 countries and territories with non-Latin top-level domains. I’ve updated my map and, as you can see below, IDN coverage is significant:
If you’re interested in learning more about IDNs, UNESCO and EURid recently released a report on the evolution and challenges of IDNs. It’s a good read and it highlights some of the struggles that countries and registries face and taking…
I received an advance review copy of Pankaj Ghemeawat’s new book World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It. I greatly enjoyed his previous book, Redefining Global Strategy, calling it a valuable counterpoint to Tom Friedman’s book The World…
If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you know I’m a fan of internationalized domain names (IDNs). Over the past year or so, ICANN has approved more than 20 IDNs across a range of countries, scripts and languages. I’ve…
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 Fortune 100 and nearly all of the Interbrand Global…
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 of Arabic domains. I left off the Latin country code…
It was just over a year ago that Facebook started localizing itself for the world. As I noted then, the company utilized crowdsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though volunteers aren’t the only people translating content, a year later,…
France became a member of the million domain club with its one-millionth .fr registration on January 11th. Here are the top six country codes based on registrations: Germany: 11,120,000 China: 6,035,000 United Kingdom: 6,010,000 Netherlands: 2,545,000 Italy: 1,426,000 United States:…
I recently finished reading Redefining Global Strategies: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter by Pankaj Ghemawat. This book provides a strong counterpoint to Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat. While The World is Flat may leave an…
Earlier this year I developed the Map of the World Wide Web, shown here: This map was designed to fit on a cubicle wall and include the major country code top level domains (ccTLDs) that a global Webmaster may encounter.…
When you work in this industry for awhile, you get pretty familiar with country codes such as .de for Germany or .cn for China. But there are simply too many country codes to memorize them all. Which is what drove…