Dr. Simi comes to the US — the right way
Who is Dr. Simi? I was asking myself that recently and found out here. Dr. Simi is the mascot of Farmacías Similares, the world’s second-largest pharmacy chain. It has over …
Country Codes
For global brands, Russian is no longer a “top 10” language
Russian was once considered a “top 10” language — one that any company serious about global growth would support. But Putin’s horrific actions have put an end to that. Over …
Lead the World to Your Website on July 27th
A localized website is of little value if local users cannot find it. And yet many global websites continue to make visual and technical mistakes that keep local websites effectively …
Think beyond .com: From country codes to internationalized domain names
One of the major takeaways from the Web Globalization Report Card is the importance of providing “front doors” to your localized websites. These doors begin with the addresses themselves, which …
Amazon launches in Sweden with Amazon.se
As global expansion goes, Amazon has, over the years, moved slowest. But when it does commit to a market, it tends to stick around and increase its investment and service …
.Com turns 150
As in 150 million. According to Verisign, there are now more than 150 million registrations of .com (of which I account for about a dozen): .Com remains the most popular …
.FR turns 34
Hard to believe, but the country code for France turned 34 last week. There are now roughly 3.6 million registrations in use. Where has the time gone? Yet I must …
Amazon and India: Actions and Languages
In technology, as in life, actions speak louder than words. And if you look at the actions Amazon has been taking over the past 18 months, it’s clear that Amazon …
The tragic irony of Amazon vs. Amazon
Imagine if a Brazilian technology company created an online store called Appalachia. And, over the years, Appalachia.com grew to become a global giant, so much so that the company pursued …
New report illustrates how country codes enable diversity in languages on the internet
Thanks to a heads-up from Ali at CircleID, I discovered a new report by Oxford Information Labs (sponsored by the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries. The Council of …
Country codes of the world. XL.
For quite some time people have asked me about creating a larger version of our Country Codes of the World map, something they could pin up in their conference rooms …
Welcome to the Kingdom of eSwatini, formerly known as Swaziland
When I read about Swaziland’s recent name change, by decree, my first thought was: What about the country code? As in .sz? As far as I can tell, it’s way …
A unique look at the emerging multilingual Internet
I’m happy to announce that I’ve updated my map of the world’s internationalized domain names for 2018: The map includes all ICANN-approved country code IDNs for the world — more …
The Internet connects devices; Language connects people
There are more than three billion people on the internet today, yet fewer than 25% speak English natively. Roughly a billion of these non-English speakers connect to the Internet via mobile …
Country Codes of the World XL
I love to design custom Country Code or IDN prints for various companies and organizations. And, on occasion, these prints can be quite large, as shown below: This photo is from the London …