Global by Design

Apple today announced the iPhone 3G — a tri-band phone that will operate in most countries around the world. So it’s no surprise that Apple wants to sell the iPhone in as many of these countries as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, Apple supports a consistent design across its many country Web sites. So when it came [...]

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If you visit the .com pages of Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, Apple, and Amazon, you’ll see the usual bursts of color and promotional elements — that is, business as usual.
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, [...]

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I’ve had Google Analytics installed on this site for some time now, which makes it a great resource for tracking the most popular posts of the year.
So here are the top 10 posts of 2007 based on traffic:

The Best Global Web Sites of 2007
Starbucks CEO on Globalization: Don’t Go Changing This quote from the Starbucks [...]

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The Apple iPhone goes on sale today in the UK and Germany.
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 [...]

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So I gave in to my inner geek and purchased an iPhone.
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 [...]

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PC World writes that Google is testing new home page designs for Taiwan and Hong. This comes on the heals of Google’s new Korean home page.
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 — [...]

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What separates good global Web sites from great global Web sites? Is it just the number of languages a Web site supports? Certainly languages are essential.
Although every Web site is global by nature, few Web sites support enough languages to be understood by the majority of the world’s Internet users.
But translation is just one aspect [...]

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Here are some thoughts from the past two days of the Idiom User Summit, in no particular order:
- There was a lot of buzz around machine translation (MT). Both Systran and Language Weaver are here and there were (at least) four sessions devoted to integrating Idiom WorldServer with MT. More important, the translation agencies and [...]

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2006 is a few days away and I can’t resist looking into my crystal ball to see what the year holds for all of us in the Web globalization industry.
But before reading my take on the year ahead, let’s see how I did on my 2005 predictions:
2005 Predictions Scorecard
Web Globalization Goes Mainstream – Correct
While Web [...]

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The Apple iTunes Australia store is now live. That brings Apple to a total of 21 iTunes stores.

Anyone care to guess how long before a New Zealand iTunes store launches?

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