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 …
Russia
Russia & Ukraine: A tale of two languages – one rising and one falling
For companies with global aspirations, Russian has long been considered a “must support” language. These days, that is no longer the case. But even before Putin decided to invade Ukraine, …
Russia mandates locally made apps on mobile devices
What was for many years a threat has now become a reality — a Russian law requiring mobile phone manufacturers to ship with preinstalled Russian-made apps (or allow them to …
Yet another reason to avoid using flags on your global gateway
As readers of this blog well know, I often refer to China and Taiwan when making the case for avoiding the use of flags on a global gateway. There are …
Apple opens online store for Russia (and a call for improving the global gateway)
Not exactly breaking news, but Apple Store is now live in Russia. I love the art they used for the launch: The global gateway that Apple uses for its online …
Russia’s Internet growth is just getting started
I checked domain registration stats from Russia’s registry and here are the high-level numbers: If you combine IDNs and ccTLDs, Russia becomes the third-ranked country in terms of country code registrations, behind …
From Russia, with IDNs
A little more than a year ago, Russia opened up registration for its top-level IDN: рф. Since then, more than 900,000 domains have been registered, making this the most successful …
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, …
Is Facebook “translation worthy” or just plain cheap?
I read at Design Across Cultures that Facebook is planning to use “crowdsourcing” to allow its users to create translated content. Crowdsourcing is a hot new buzzword that is best …