Locales demystified

For a very good overview of the challenges of overcoming our current locales dilemma, check out Tex Texin’s presentation from the recent Unicode conference. I’m not sure there is going to be an locales solution that pleases everyone. But we …

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Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies

It’s official! The book I spent the past year on is now available from Amazon. It came in at a whopping 576 pages and – as I look through it again – was a very ambitious undertaking. I set out to create a book that covered the full landscape of Web globalization issues – from planning to marketing to technical and linguistic obstacles. I even added a section about international domain names. Then the editor suggested “Hands On” sections and I added those as well; the Hands On sections were actually quite a bit of work considering that I had to recruit volunteer translators across eight languages. But the hard work was well worth it. I’m very proud of this book and I hope people like it.

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Scooby Doo domain name drama

The battle between Hannah Barbara and a fan site over the “scoobydoo.co.uk” domain has taken a new twist. You can read about it here. This episode underscoes the importance of companies reserving domain names globally from the onset.

Of Wal-Mart and Web sites

Wal-Mart has stores in 9 countries yet offers localized sites for only two of these countries: Germany and Mexico. And even these two sites are little more than facades. I’m going to do quite a bit more writing about why …

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