Global by Design

So Bit.ly has launched an even shorter URL: J.mp.
You can’t get any shorter than this, at least not until we see single-digital TLDs.
I can’t help but wonder if this new URL is a sign that Bit.ly is planning to shift away from its Libyan-dependent domain to one that may be a tad bit more politically [...]

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Starbucks may be closing stores in the US, but it’s still growing internationally.
According to the Seattle PI:
Starbucks recently opened stores in the Czech Republic, Amsterdam and Poland. And it has plans for a big push in China.
Starbucks began its expansion outside of North America in 1996 when it opened two stores in Japan. By 2000, [...]

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It was just over a year ago that Facebook started localizing itself for the world.
As I noted then, the company utilized crowdsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though volunteers aren’t the only people translating content, a year later, Facebook has done an impressive job of going global.
Om Malik recently reported some key stats from [...]

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I bought a LaCie hard drive recently, and I noticed an interesting gap between the global usability of the LaCie Web site and the installation software that shipped with the drive.
I’m sure this is an issue not unique to LaCie. The folks who manage the Web site generally sit in a different part of the [...]

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Techcrunch reports from Facebook’s developer conference today in which company announced that it would open its “crowdsourcing” translation platform to its legion of application developers. Here’s the press release excerpt:
As a result of the worldwide success of Facebook’s translation system, the company has opened up the Translation Application to any developer using Facebook Platform. Beginning [...]

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