Global by Design

Adventures in Web Globalization

 

Philips CEO on expanding globally

September 2nd, 2010 · No Comments

Last week I said I’d love to see more profiles of global-minded business execs and, sure enough, the Journal delivers. Here’s an interview with the Philips Electronics CEO Gerard Kleisterlee. According to the article, the company’s emerging-market sales increased 29% in the second quarter from a year earlier and now make up 34% of the company’s [...]

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Tags: Business globalization · Web Globalization

See the world: A multilingual eye chart

August 31st, 2010 · No Comments

The latest creation from Byte Level Research, available for purchase at bytelevel.com/eyechart. This unique take on the Snelling eye chart includes characters from more than 20 languages. It’s the perfect gift for an eye doctor — as well as the globally myopic.

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Tags: Arabic · Global By Design · Languages · Unicode

Hotels.com and its global growth spurt

August 30th, 2010 · No Comments

In the 2008 Web Globalization Report Card, Hotels.com ranked close to last place in the web services category. In this year’s Report Card, Hotels.com ranked only behind Google and Wikipedia — an impressive turnaround. In just two years, Hotels.com added 19 languages, improved global consistency, and, most important, improved local relevance. It’s nice to see [...]

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Tags: Web Globalization · Web Globalization Report Card

Best global retail web site: IKEA

August 26th, 2010 · No Comments

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted findings from the 2010 Web Globalization Report Card, but I did want to include a brief note on the retail sector. We define this industry segment to include those retailers (and a few food/beverage chains) that have a physical presence in the countries in which they do business. This excludes [...]

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Tags: Retail globalization · Web Globalization · Web Globalization Report Card

Upcoming: Speaking at LocWorld and Unicode Conference

August 15th, 2010 · 1 Comment

I’m happy to be not only attending but speaking at Localization World and Unicode Conference in October. Here are the details on my sessions: Localization World Seattle, WA October 6: International Search Summit October 7: The Next Ten Years of Web Globalization October 7: Making Your Website Truly Global — and No, We’re Not Talking About Language Unicode [...]

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Tags: Events · Unicode