NOTO, as in No Tofu
First of all, I love tofu. But when you see it on a computer screen, it’s not so nice. Like those two rows of “tofu-shaped” objects shown below that indicate a missing font: Tofu used to be a much bigger problem…
Category Mobile
American Express: The best global financial services website of 2016
For the 2016 Web Globalization Report Card, we studied 9 financial services websites: Allianz American Express Axa Citibank HSBC Marsh MasterCard Visa Western Union American Express emerged on top with support for an impressive 41 languages; it most recently added Bosnian.…
Companies are blogging less and that’s a mistake
An interesting study courtesy of the Society for New Communications Research: Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes has been studying corporate communications strategies of the Fortune 500 for the past eight years. Key findings include: Twenty-one percent of the Fortune 500 has a…
Google to the Internet: Go mobile or watch your sales rank fall
Four years ago, for the Web Globalization Report Card, I began noting (and rewarding) those websites that supported mobile devices. Even then one could easily see the virtual grounds shifting in favor of mobile devices. But at the time, only about 20% of the…
Mozilla frees web browser from mobile language limitations: A Q&A
I was intrigued to read recently that Mozilla is working on updating the Firefox Android mobile browser, codename Fennec, to allow the browser to offer more languages than the underlying Android system currently supports. Typically, apps leverage language support from the underlying operating system,…
Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report: A web globalization persepective
It has become an annual ritual, Mary Meeker, a Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner, releases a data dump of key Internet stats and trends. Last year, I wrote a post on a few slides that jumped out at me.…
A global look at Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report
Mary Meeker, a Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner, recently provided another healthy dose of data and trends, along with a number of predictions. But the media largely overlooked the web and software globalization implications of many of these slides.…
Living in a post-PC world
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…
Apple iOS 6 provides a multilingual welcome
Apple provides a subtle, but global, welcome to new users of iOS 6. I just downloaded the OS today and captured a few screens to illustrate below: The only thing that changes is the language of the “slide to set…
Taking Mobile Global: Tips for Aligning Mobile and Global Web Strategies
Here’s a new article I’ve written for UX Magazine on the importance of aligning global and mobile strategies. Too often, companies develop mobile apps and mobile websites without considering localization requirements. Here are two previous articles I’ve written for UX Magazine: Select…
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 point in time. So I really wasn’t sure where this…
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 of Arabic domains. I left off the Latin country code…
Amazon’s Kindle goes multilingual
The Kindle 3 was announced last evening. The big news about the device is the price — starting at $139. You could argue that this is the first mass-market e-reader. Of course, going truly mass market means going multilingual. Last…
iPhone app globalization: Ready for take-off
The WSJ has an article about iPhone developers taking their apps global. It’s very early days, but it’s safe to say that localization vendors are drooling over the possibilities. Although many apps aren’t going to present much in the way…