But with the iPhone 4 update, Apple continues to push ahead on the global front. Multilingual Mac has documented these improvements, which include fonts that now display some Indic languages finally (though input methods are missing).

Two other features worth notice are:

• Voice control in 24 languages
• The emoji keyboard is now readily accessible. It had been hidden to non-JP users (and it’s quite entertaining to play with)

But one improvement that I just picked up on — and it could have been added prior to iOS 4 — is the localization of “shortcut” top-level domain feature.

I’ll demonstrate below.

First note my keyboard list (if only I were fluent in all of these languages!):

Now I open the Mail app.

Note  below how when I press and hold the “.com” key that I get a nice range of ccTLDs and other top-level domains to select from.

These domains vary based on my activated keyboards.

The more keyboards you activate, the more domains you have to select from.

This is a very nice touch — and I imagine that the Apple devs are right now working on adding IDNs to the mix…

What other international improvements have you noticed with the new iPhone?

Here’s my favorite:

I seriously doubt that “Oops!” has been localized for different markets.

In fact, many companies overlook the localization of error messages.

For starters, doing so is no trivial task — as many of these error messages are generated by underlying pieces of software that in some cases cannot be easily localized.

And it’s no fun to focus on failure. We like to focus our energies on positive user experiences, not negative ones. Besides, these are edge cases, right?

But as I bounce from one Apple error message to another, it’s comforting to know that even Apple — a company that prides itself on user experience — still has some serious work left to do.

It’s very early days, but it’s safe to say that localization vendors are drooling over the possibilities. Although many apps aren’t going to present much in the way of translation revenue, the localization engineering work can be quite substantial.

I’m currently aware of two vendors that have been doing a good job of specializing in this area:

• iPhoneLocalizer.com
• Glyph Language Services

Some app developers I’ve spoken with still question the degree to which they must localize their apps. After all, many report significant sales in markets around the word WITHOUT any localization investment on their part. So they naturally want to know what additional sales they’re going to get for their investment. There are many factors to consider. The ROI of a 99 cent app could be tough to achieve if you’ve got to completely internationalize your app. If your app is already internationalized, the ROI is much easier to achieve.

But China and Japan, as noted in the WSJ article, could be what pushes more and more developers into finally opening their checkbooks.

Here’s what one iPhone developer says:

“We definitely have plans to get all our games localized,” said Andrew Stein, PopCap’s director of mobile business development. “We may see more than half of our sales come from outside of the U.S.” PopCap’s $2.99 “Plants vs. Zombies” tower defense game is currently No. 1 in China, according to App Store rankings.

The article stresses that few apps are currently localized — and I will second that. In fact, the only apps that I’m aware of that support more than 20 languages are Apple’s own default apps. Outside of Apple, PayPal and Google apps appear to be the most global overall.

Here’s a rough tally of what I’ve seen so far:

• PayPal Mobile: 15 languages
• Google Mobile: 15 languages
• Facebook Mobile: 7 languages
• Monopoly: 6 languages

What am I missing here?

After I created the Country Codes of the World map, I began looking at other platforms for the design. And since I own an iPhone, I couldn’t resist creating a custom wallpaper for it.

Here are two ccTLD wallpapers for the iPhone.

If you’d like to use one, simply save the image to your desktop and then import it to your iPhone via iPhoto or your PC images folder.

I’m using the black background currently.

I’m also working on a wallpaper for laptops and desktops. I’ll keep you posted…

Along the way, I discovered a rather interesting bug.

It’s not a huge deal, but a bug nonetheless. And one likely to cause a fair amount of confusion.

First of all, if you have never modified your language settings (The “International” button on the System Preferences menu)  then you won’t hit this bug.

If, however, you have made some changes to your language settings, read on…

Here is what my International settings menu looked like before the upgrade:

You’ll notice that I have U.S. English at the top of the list, followed by Japanese, followed by a “neutral” English. Normally, U.S. English would be followed by neutral English, which is the source of the bug.

When I began upgrading to Snow Leopard, I was presented with the usual legalese page — except that this one was in Japanese:

Apparently, Apple ignored my U.S. English setting and figured I had my computer set up for Japanese, hence the Japanese text.

To fix this, I simply bumped up the neutral English language setting ahead of Japanese.

NOTE: The same bug will appear if you have British English at the top of the list followed by a language other than English.

UPDATE: This bug may also impact the results of Spotlight as well. That is, you could see results in Japanese mixed with English. I haven’t been able to repro it myself but have encountered a few blog posts related to this issue.

The Kindle has gone international, sort of.

That is, Amazon is launching a new Kindle outfitted with a radio chip that works in most of the world’s cellular markets (100+) — as opposed to the US-only Kindle, which operates only on Sprint’s network.

Unfortunately, just because someone in, say, Russia will be able to download a book, doesn’t mean that the book itself will display Cyrillic characters.

You see, even though the Kindle may operate in much of the world, it is still a Latin-only device.

I learned this the hard way when I helped adapt Forgetting English for the Kindle. For example, in the short story First Sunday the Tongan line “Pou’li ā, Sione” came out as “Pou’li a, Sione” — minus the ā.

That’s because “ā” and many other extended Latin characters won’t display properly. Needless to say, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese aren’t going to have much luck either. Based on my parsing the sparse documentation on the Amazon site, I understand the issue isn’t a lack of Unicode support but a lack of font support.

Apparently you can use this Unicode hack to get your Kindle to display non-Latin characters, but this is hardly a mainstream solution. People shouldn’t have to download their own fonts to display the books they want to read. Basic font support in an e-reader is, well, something you would expect to find installed by default.

I’ve since come across a number of people who develop books for the Kindle who aren’t exactly happy about the situation.

Why doesn’t Amazon include a Unicode-friendly font on its device? Perhaps this was by design, to save on memory. After all, a Unicode font can easily weigh more than several MB, which takes away from precious book storage space.

My opinion is this: Amazon didn’t design globallay from day one. And that’s a shame for readers and writers alike. When you compare the Kindle with the iPhone, which supports more than 30 languages, I can only say that I’m looking forward to the coming of the iTablet.

Here’s a video of it in action (with some rather odd musical accompaniment):

What’s particularly interesting is that this IME began on the iPhone.

Here is a screen grab of the Chinese IME on my iPhone — and my sad attempt at inputting a character:

It’s interesting to see innovations migrating from phone to PC, certainly a sign of things to come.

Turns out, most companies haven’t even registered Twitter accounts for their primary brands.

Like who?

Apple, for one.

Here we have someone who apparently likes apples but isn’t Apple:

It appear that Microsoft reserved its account early on, though nothing is there. Microsoft does have about a dozen Twitter accounts that do include content.

Coke — someone who drinks Coke, but not the company.

While Pepsi does have a Twitter account.

The Wall Street Journal has an article out about this domain name rush.

So many questions come to mind:

• Will Twitter enforce trademarks for valid holders? Usually, the WIPO does this with domain names, but this isn’t actually a domain name in the traditional sense.
• What percentage of the millions of new Twitter accounts being registered every day simply squatters hoping to make a quick buck? That is, how much of Twitter’s growth actual growth?
• And what about third-party domain marketplaces — will we see them emerge? Or will Twitter start its own marketplace?

In the meantime, if you’re thinking about reserving a Twitter domain, do it now before getting Twit-jacked…

That’s an impressive ratio of people to domains — one ccTLD per 5.3 people — and it the highest ratio of any country with more than five million residents.

Germany comes in a close second, with a ratio of roughly one ccTLD per 6.5 people.

Granted, many of the owners of these .nl domains are not Dutch. Rather, they are multinational companies like FedEx and Apple.

But even if you take this into account, the Dutch registry SIDO claims that the Netherlands still has the highest density of domains, roughly 28 .NL domains per 1,000 people — a still impressive ratio.

Why is this I wonder?

Big mistake.

On a Saturday afternoon one November, I decided to bike over to my office and then back again to figure out the route. I figured I was smart in planning ahead.

But I got a late start, a really late start, and by the time I got to Redmond it was dark. I was freezing, dehydrated, exhausted. And my wife had expected me home an hour ago.

I called her and told her I’d be a “little” late. She offered to come pick me up even though she had no idea where I was and, for the most part, neither did I. I hadn’t actually made it my office — that would have taken another half hour.

So I swallowed what little pride I had left and asked her to come get me. Now, there was just one problem with this situation — she didn’t know where I was. I had my iPhone so I was able to talk her over the bridge and eventually to the gas station where I was making myself home. But it wasn’t a pleasant experience, to put it mildly, and one she will never let me forget.

If I had only had the iPhone app that my brother just developed, things would have gone quite a bit more smoothly. The app allows you to email your current location to someone else so they can map out how to get to you. Simple. Easy. I’ll be sure to have it with me the next time to try biking to work…

You can download here.

Does this icon say “language” to you?

It doesn’t to me.

But the OMC design studio feels so strongly about it that it has launched a web site to promote this icon as a global standard.

I applaud the effort and I fully agree that there is a need for such an icon, but I don’t believe that this one should be it. I find that this looks like a floppy disk (and, yes, I’m aware that there is an entire generation of computer users out there who don’t even know what a floppy disk looks like).

If I were to vote for an international icon, I would vote for a generic globe icon. Companies such as Panasonic, Dow Corning, and Microsoft have used a globe icon to denote either language or country/region (or both).

Other companies use tiny maps, such as John Deere and Caterpillar.

I prefer the globe, but either will do the trick.

What do you think?

PS: I just discovered that I wrote about the need for a standard icon way back in 2004. I preferred the globe icon even back then.

And yet I still ended up getting the Kindle.

It’s thinner than I expected and I really get a kick of how it never is “off” in the conventional sense. When you turn the device off you typically get an illustration of a famous autho.

The interface is usable enough, but there is plenty of room for improvement. It was funny to watch my wife try it for the first time. She touched the screen to select an option — a sign of what the iPhone is doing to us all. I felt the urge to touch the screen as well. This makes me realize that Apple is going to do something just like the Kindle eventually (maybe sooner than later). Perhaps power consumption is the big obstacle. But it’s hard to see any hand-held device not going “touch” in the years ahead.

I LOVE the embedded dictionary. If you set the cursor next to a word you don’t understand, the definition appears at the bottom of the screen. I’m going to learn a lot of words that I was simply too lazy to look up these many years.

But the reason for getting the Kindle wasn’t to expand my vocabulary so much as to save shelf space.

Is it bookworthy?

Since downsizing my life back into an apartment, I’ve realized that I can’t keep acquiring books. I love books. I adore books. But I only have so much room for books. And I don’t like to get rid of them once I’ve acquired them.

I’ve found that I’ve resisted buying books simply because I’m running out of shelf space. With the Kindle I can now read those books that may not be “bookworthy” enough to take up precious space on a shelf.

The good news is that I can continue buying those print books that I can’t live without, my wife’s book included — but it’s nice to have a choice.

I also am now making good use of ManyBooks, an excellent repository of copyright-free books in a number of formats. I don’t think I would have ever purchased White Jacket by Herman Melville, but I just downloaded it.

Moby-Dick is clearly bookworthy, but is every Melville book? The Kindle gives me the opportunity to preview a book before buying the “real” print version. Amazon provides a preview option with books as well.

And, yes, I could have done the same exact thing on my PC, downloading PDF versions of all these classic books. And I have already downloaded a number of books in PDF form. But I just don’t read books on a computer, even a laptop computer. There are too many other distractions — email, news, facebook, this blog!

With the Kindle, all you do, for the most part, is read. And I like that.

The decline of “books”; the rise of “content”

As a writer — one who has a novel of his own that he’d like to see in print form one day — the Kindle is a mixed blessing. I agree that this device and the many to follow represent the future of reading for the generation that doesn’t even get a newspaper delivered to the door each morning (I’m still clinging to my daily New York Times).

I don’t believe the Kindle will eliminate books, perhaps a few mainstream bookstores, but not books.

But I do feel books becoming “content” now that they are digitized, along with music and movies and anything else that will fit on a flash disk. In fact, I don’t even view the books on my Kindle as books. Books are those objects on my shelves, that I’ve dragged with me from city to city — some as long as 30 years (I still have a few Hardy Boys books, even a Nancy Drew).

It’s an odd feeling to be caught between two technologies. The print books were once cutting edge — and now we have the digital equivalent.

I guess in the end all that matters is that people keep reading. And if the Kindle achieves that goal, so be it. I certainly find myself reading a bit more since getting it.

I’m not very patient with games. Which is probably why I’m not very good.

My brother has concocted a tile puzzle game for the iPhone, shown below, that I still haven’t figured out — even at the easiest setting.

Maybe you’ll have better luck than I’ve had. The good news is that Chris has made it available for free here.

What I really like about the app is that you can use your own photos. I thought that my pics would be easier to unscramble than the default pics.

They weren’t.

For anyone out there looking for a great developer — proficient on both the iPhone and the PC — you can contact Chris at  chris@chrisyunker.com.

So after a slow start upgrading to the iPhone 2.0 OS on Friday, I’ve since had a chance to review a number of the apps and have been very impressed so far (though a few did cause the iPhone to crash).

As I reviewed the Apps in the iTunes store I began to notice that they were available only in English. Here is a screen grab from the AOL IM app:

Just to be sure about this, I also visited iTunes Spain and looked up the same AOL IM App. And as you see here, it is available only in English:

As far as I can tell, the only iPhone App currently available in a language other than English is Apple’s own Remote App, available in these languages:

I know it’s early yet. But keep in mind that the iPhone launched globally on Friday, which means there are a lot of markets that have a localized iPhone but only one fully localized iPhone App to use on them.

This means there is a HUGE opportunity for the software localization vendors of the world to help these software developers take these apps global. Apple says it sold one million iPhones over the past three days — and 10 million apps.

Here are some of the companies that currently offer non-localized apps: eBay, MySpace, Bloomberg, Travelocity, MLB.com, Oracle, and Salesforce.com.

If you spot any iPhone Apps that have been localized outside of English, please let me know. This will be very interesting to follow…

UPDATE: Adam Houser just alerted me to  Anime Match by Jirbo, shown here:

This app is available in Japanese. It’s a catchy little game actually — and free!

I have the old iPhone and tried to upgrade this morning. Apparently I’m one of many thousands of people (or more) who have received nothing but error messages. Here is one of them:

Apple had to know the strain to its servers would be huge this morning. Why the company decided to roll out its new 3G iPhone while also upgrading all current iPhone software on the same day is beyond me. They should have handled the upgrade a day early to better distribute server loads globally.

It will be interesting to see if Apple steps up and admits its mistake or just ignores its growing global user base. This is a critical point in Apple’s evolution and it would be nice to see the company get more customer friendly, though I’m not holding my breath.

UPDATE: Well, it’s two hours later and I have another error screen to add to my collection:

Based on what I’m hearing from others, there are two main errors: -4 and -9838. Both appear related to some bug or some traffic issue with the iTunes servers. I was finally able to upgrade to the 2.0 OS, and it seems to be working fine, but I just can’t sync to iTunes.

Still no official word anywhere on the Apple Web site that there is a problem. Companies are judged not just by their successes but also by how they handle their mistakes. Apple is losing big points today.

SUCCESS! About seven hours after I began the upgrade process my iPhone is now officially upgraded. I just took a stab at using Facebook and Twitterific. With each new app this phone — despite my earlier grumblings — is just going to get more and more valuable.

Fortunately, Apple supports a consistent design across its many country Web sites. So when it came time to go live with the translated Web content on 22+ local websites, the process was a relative breeze. Here are four country home pages:

Imagine how difficult this undertaking would be if each country had it own unique Web design requiring the redesigning of visuals for each site.

When it comes to global rollouts, it’s hard to argue with the efficiency of using a global template.

A globally consistent product requires a globally consistent Web site.

Having said this, Apple could still improve a great deal when it comes to Web localization. That is, a number of the local Web sites really aren’t all that local. Like this clip, from the Japan site — an A/V demo of the new MobileMe service — which is available in English only.

But if you visit the Chinese home pages of these five companies, you’re going to see the following:

Although white more commonly signifies death and mourning in China, black is a more effective way of expressing grief on the white background of a Web page.

Google China and Baidu have turned their logos black as well.

It’s just a shame more of the world won’t see these sites — as I found them quite moving. Everything about China seems to be beyond comprehension, including, unfortunately, this earthquake.

So here are the top 10 posts of 2007 based on traffic:

1. The Best Global Web Sites of 2007
2. Starbucks CEO on Globalization: Don’t Go Changing This quote from the Starbucks CEO speaks volumes about the company’s success around the world.
3. Which Country; Which Language? A guest article by John Greenwood of InterPro Translation Services continues to be very popular.
4. The Best Global Web Sites (and why) This entry is a nice summary of some of the best practices exhibited by the top sites in the 2007 Report Card.
5. Register.Me Montenegro is getting its own country code (.me) and one can imagine the entertaining possibilities this domain presents for creative URLs.
6. Staples: Asi de Facil Hardly a week goes by that I don’t press my “That was easy” button, translated in Spanish. They sell a lot of these here in San Diego. I’m still waiting for the Chinese version.
7. If The World Were 100 People This is a personal favorite.
8. Scaling a Great Wall: Top 5 Tips for Learning Chinese This is another guest article, by Saul Gitlin of Kang & Lee, and a very hot topic these days.
9. Just Don’t Do It: The Art of Slogan Translation
10. The Localization of iPhone

So there you have it — the top 10 entries out of the 99 entries posted in 2007. Yes, I know I’m not the most active blogger as bloggers go. But I only blog when the urge strikes and sometimes it just does not strike. Which is probably a good thing.

As Abraham Lincoln once said: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

And on that note I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Awhile back I wondered how Apple would localize its Web keypad, which features the .com button to accelerate the input of URLs. I own an iPhone and really do make use of this button.

So I took a look at the German keypad demo today and here is what I found. If you look closely here, you’ll see that if the user presses and holds the .com key the .de button also appears:

This is an interesting way to provide two such shortcuts.

But I think Apple made a big mistake here. The .de key should not be the optional button, it should be the default button; .com should be the optional button.

After all, the most popular German Web sites all have .de extensions. Even American companies that are successful in Germany, such as Google and Amazon, use the .de domain.

Now what about UK? Is there an optional .co.uk button available by pressing .com? Oddly, no.

What this says to me is that Apple either:

1. Apple was in too much of a hurry to launch in Europe that it didn’t really put the time and thought into localizing the interface correctly.
2. Apple did indeed take its time localizing for these two markets, but the folks in charge inherently believed that .com is more important than local domains.
3. Apple tested the interface both ways in both local markets and found that this solution is indeed whats users want.

I vote for scenario number 2. What do you think?

One of the things I first noticed (and love) about the Web browser is the .com button on the keypad, shown here.

Of course, this little shortcut isn’t so handy if I want to visit a .org or .edu Web site.

It’s also not much use for visiting country-specific Web sites, such as www.yahoo.fr.

Which is why the localization of this interface is going to be an interesting thing to watch evolve.

It is just a matter of time before we see the iPhone launched around the world. So does that mean the .com key will be replaced by .de or .fr keys? I imagine so.

This will give companies yet another good reason to register country code domains. While a Web user in France may first go to acme.com and then navigate to acme.fr when visiting a Web site. Using the iPhone, it’s likely that person will simply go to acme.fr, an example of a new interface changing user behavior.

The other interesting thing I’ve noticed on the iPhone so far is that it doesn’t appear to be using a “conventional” Unicode font. That is, I’m finding that the interface displays Chinese and other Asian scripts just fine — as well as Cyrillic — but it can’t display Arabic or Hebrew scripts. What this says to me is that Apple doesn’t have the Middle East on its near-term global expansion plans. My guess is that it’s using the scaled-down font to conserve drive space. Documentation is hard to come by so far so I’d love to hear from anyone out there who knows more about this.

I’ve been to Europe once so far and the iPhone held up quite nicely; AT&T didn’t hit me up for too much in roaming fees. It is interesting — though not surprising — that you can’t de-activate cellular roaming and just rely on Wi-Fi. I did have a faulty power adapter but got that replaced at the Apple store with no resistance.

But back to the Web browser. I know this has been said many times before, but this is the first phone that makes browsing the Web about as easy as it is on a computer. And I suspect that over time this will have an impact not only on how companies develop Web sites in the US, but how they localize these sites for markets around the world.

The company is focusing on those markets where it currently does not lead. It looks like the new Web designs for Taiwan and Hong Kong will follow Korea’s lead — with more content, more animation, more everything.

Google cites the need to take advantage of the higher broadband speeds, which is certainly one good reason. But there is also the simple fact that austere Web designs have not (to this point) gone over very well with most Asian countries.

Does this mean that Google is sacrificing its identity to succeed in Asia? Perhaps. If, five years from now, tastes in Asia veer toward the austere, Google could find itself out-Googled by someone else.

It’s easy to be austere when you’re a one-trick pony, as was the case for Google six years ago. But it’s hard to be austere when you have so many different applications to offer. Even the new Apple iPhone, which is widely praise for its simplicity, features 16 icons on its home page (with more to come).

Perhaps feature-creep is just a fact of life for maturing Web sites. It wasn’t that long ago that Amazon featured only books on its home page and Yahoo! was little more than a one-column layout.