Global by Design

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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If you’ve read this blog recently, you are aware of John’s reports on Facebook’s efforts to translate its Website into German and other European languages. I am a keen observer of the “kraut-sourcing” efforts. However, in Germany Facebook faces an entrenched competitor: “StudiVZ”.
StudiVZ is a social networking platform, very similar to Facebook. In contrast [...]

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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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The customized Google home page known as iGoogle has been localized into a bunch of additional languages, bringing the grand total to 42. Here are the most recently added languages:
- Arabic
- Bulgarian
- Catalian
- Croatian
- Icelandic
- Indonesian
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Malay
- Serbian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Tagalog
Since languages span borders, the total number of country domains now supported by [...]

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There are many problems with using pull-down menus on a Web site, but the one that jumps out at me occurs in those “Select Country” pull down menus.
Today I tried to register on a popular consumer Web site that will remain nameless.
My default country came up as US Virgin Islands for some strange reason. [...]

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Last year, Montenegro split up with Serbia, becoming an independent country, as well as the 192nd member of the United Nations.
This has created a bit of a headache for companies and organizations that manage things like maps and locale-dependent software and even those country code extensions that you see on Web sites, like www.apple.fr [...]

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