The Chinese domain name bubble bursts
Nearly one year ago, I asked Will .CN become the next .COM? And perhaps I was right in more ways than one. Because now it appears that .CN is experiencing …
The Branding of Country Codes: A list of “countryless” ccTLDs
A country code top-level-domains (ccTLD) has traditionally been used to signify a country-specific web site or resource, or simply to tell users where a given organization is located. For example, …
Global by Belarus
Here is an example of ccTLD usage that hits rather close to home. And it’s not some upstart web company out of the Bay Area. No, this is a company …
Decyphering Google Translate on your web logs
Whenever I read this site’s web logs, I’m always fascinated by the number of referrals via Google Translate. Every month there seems to be more of them, which could mean …
What does Libya have in common with Twitter? Ask Bit.ly
Bit.ly, the URL shortener now used by Twitter, is not the first company to craft its name out of a county code top-level domain (ccTLD). But Bit.ly does appear to …
The best mini-series you’ve probably never seen
The one-line description on Amazon says: Police detective Ronnie Craven investigates the killing of his own daughter and becomes embroiled in a vast conspiracy. Edge of Darkness is a 1985 …
TED is translation-worthy
Earlier this year, TED began recruiting volunteers to translate its recorded presentations, known as TED Talks. It looks like the venture is off to a strong start. According to TED, …
Type Russian without the keyboard
There are shortcuts on most English keyboards for entering characters such as á and é. But I can never seem to remember what those shortcuts are. Fortunately, there is TypeIt, …
Note to Google Books: Please rotate
I just noticed that the book I wrote several years ago Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies is now up on Google Books. I appears though that Google still has a …
Just how global is your browser?
Firefox 3.5 is now out and available in more than 70 languages. Yes, 70 languages. Naturally, I was curious to learn how many languages the other browsers currently support. Here …
Bing cuts the clicks
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft, so take this with a grain of salt. Since Bing launched I’ve been thinking a lot about search engines and how I use them. I’ve …
.EU to offer Greek and Cyrillic support
The European Commission has announced that it will begin supporting domain registration in Greek and Cyrillic characters. This will allow for support of all 23 official EU languages. The EC …
Bing Beats Google in Insta-translation
Bing recently added a nifty new translation feature — one that is so simple and in many ways so obvious that I can’t help wondering why Google never got around …
The Twitter Domain Rush: Don’t Get “Twit-jacked”
My previous post on Twitter got me thinking about what other companies had registered language-specific domains for their Twitter accounts. Turns out, most companies haven’t even registered Twitter accounts for …
Update on the World’s Number One Starbucks Fan
In 2005, I interviewed a man named Winter, who was on a quest to visit ever Starbucks location on this planet. Four years later, the quest continues. Unfortunately, as documented …