Duolingo’s year-end language insights

I’ve long appreciated how Duolingo removes so much friction from trying on a new language — and demystifying languages in general. Duolingo now claims an impressive 500 million language learners around the world. Based on its latest year-end post, here…

Do you speak Boganese?

Bogan is one of those Australian words that I still find highly entertaining, perhaps because I too am a little bit bogan. For example, boxed wine is known as a Bogan Briefcase: If you want to learn more about boganism,…

Google Firebase global gateway fail

Awhile back I mentioned the missing scrollbar from the Delta Airlines global gateway. It seems that Delta is not alone in making this rookie mistake. Even the folks at Google are not immune, as seen below on the Google Firebase…

Massively multilingual

It seems like only yesterday (2009 actually) when Google Translate had reached 50 languages. And for the past few years it appeared that Google has largely plateaued at the low 100s. It currently supports 133 languages, having most recently added…

Square localizes for an audience closer to home

Square has been slowly but steadily increasing its global reach, with support for 7 countries and four languages, including Japanese, French and even Catalan (in Spain). But on September 13th, Square announced web localization for a market that has nothing…

Designing for new internet users

The author William Gibson is widely attributed with the quote: The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet. This line popped into my head when I watched an insightful presentation by Rahul Goradia, a Microsoft designer, about designing…

Think Big; Think Global

I was honored to participate in a Wegginar with Laurel and Laura of Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global. I spent about an hour focusing on US small businesses and tips for going global, including: The second language you should add to…

How Klarna internationalized its typography

Klarna is one of those Buy Now Pay Later companies that is seemingly on every ecommerce checkout page these days. And, not surprisingly, the company is expanding globally at a rapid pace. Shown here is the Japan home page: Francesco…

Think Big. Think Global on June 1st

I’m pleased to be joining Laurel Delaney and the team at WEGG on June 1st for an hour focused on web globalization best practices and insights for small businesses. Here’s the plan… You can’t build a leading global brand without…

Why Adobe is one of the best global websites

For the 2022 Web Globalization Report Card, we benchmarked the following 16 consumer technology websites: Adobe Apple Canon Dell Fujifilm HP Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Nintendo Panasonic Samsung Sony Toshiba Xiaomi (Mi) Adobe emerged as number one for a second year…