Web Globalization 2010: How Many Languages is Enough?
Languages are a means to an end, and in web globalization, languages help you expand your global reach. And global reach doesn’t always mean expanding beyond borders, it could also …
What if your company didn’t make the top 25 list?
We reviewed 225 web sites for the Report Card, which means 200 sites didn’t make the “cut.” If your company is in this list of 200 and you want to …
The best global web sites of 2010
I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2010 Web Globalization Report Card. Here are the top 25 web sites overall: Google Facebook Cisco Systems Philips Samsung Wikipedia 3M NIVEA …
ICANN and the Internet ecosystem
Last month, Rod Beckstrom, President of ICANN, spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Here’s the video. It’s a great introduction to how ICANN has evolved and where …
Bangladesh applies for an IDN
Seventeen countries have applied for IDNs so far, but we only know the details on four of them: Saudi Arabia (SA): السعودية Egypt (EG): مصر United Arab Emirates (AE): امارات …
What’s the best free machine translation engine?
Google Translate is the first place I turn for free machine translation (MT), mostly because it supports the greatest number of language pairs. I use Microsoft Translator as well, but …
Facebook’s global gaffe
Facebook, with support for more than 70 languages, promises to do very well in our 2010 Report Card. That said, a week ago Facebook began rolling out a new design …
Back to Byte Level
After more than a year at Microsoft, I have decided to return to Byte Level Research. It was a tough decision to make. I enjoyed working with the many people …
Happy Chinese New Year
Let me guess. Year of the Tiger?
Web Globalization Report Card Update: More Geolocation. More Languages
After three weeks of analyzing Web sites for the 2010 Web Globalization Report Card, a number of interesting trends are coming together, and I thought I’d share a couple of …
Haitian Creole is now a machine translation staple
In response to the earthquake in Haiti, Microsoft quickly expanded its machine translation engine to include Haitian Creole. Today I noticed that Google has an alpha version of its Haitian …
US Hispanics love the Internet, but not localized web sites
I came across an interesting presentation today via Carla Briceno. The survey, sponsored by AOL and conducted by Cheskin, was based on interviewing more than a thousand Hispanic households across …
The first of the fast-track IDNs
ICANN shed some light on its fast-track application process today, announcing the first four countries to pass the string evaluation of the process. Here they are: Saudi Arabia (SA): السعودية …
Google may leave China, but don’t expect it to leave Chinese
Long before Google launched Google.cn, it launched the Chinese localized version of Google.com. And this site is alive and well and hosted outside of China’s great firewall. Just change your …
What’s the world’s most global blogging platform?
I’ve been writing this blog since 2002. Back when I started out, I wasn’t sure how long I would stick with this “blogging” thing and I didn’t really want to …