Global by Design

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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What began as just another “gisting” application — like Babel Fish — is gradually becoming an impressive translation tool. And I’m not referring to the quality of translation, though that is improving as well.
I’m referring to the breadth of languages and breadth of features that Google Translate supports.
Today, Google announced that Google Translate added support [...]

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There are tons of articles about Google vs. Baidu, but few of these articles take an in-depth look at how Google compares to Baidu from a Chinese user’s perspective.
In this article, I do just that, and I render a verdict as to which Web site is better.
Search
The best way to compare search engine quality [...]

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Way back in 2006, I predicted that Google’s international revenues would surpass US revenues by the end of 2007.
I was a few months off.
Today, Google announced Q1 results. According to Google, “revenues from outside of the United States totaled $2.65 billion, representing 51% of total revenues in the first quarter of 2008, compared to 47% [...]

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Now that Google is getting into the music downloading business in China, 2008 promises to be a very interesting year in the battle between Google China and the leading Chinese search engine Baidu.
Google today unveiled a “Year of the Rat” logo on its home page:

And, wouldn’t you know it, so did Baidu:

Interesting times.
PS: Here is [...]

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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 illustrated by Wikipedia — you take a lot of motivated volunteers, give them access to your Web site, and let them go crazy. I’m simplifying things [...]

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