Planet Web I18n

It’s not easy having an American English keyboard when you frequently need to input characters like è or ä or ç.

Or ¥. Or €.

Maybe it’s because I switch between Mac and Windows so frequently. Or maybe I’m just too lazy to remember the keyboard shortcuts.

Fortunately, I just discovered: CopyPasteCharacter.com.

Give it a shot and you’ll see how it works.

I’ve got the site bookmarked.

Now I’ll just have to remember where I saved the bookmark. ☺

PS: TypeIt is also a great solution.

There is a woman who set out to read (and review) a book a day for a year.

Not Moby-Dick, mind you. Books of a certain length.

And she did it.

A book a day for a year.

But she kept going. She’s still reading!

And, as luck would have it, she just read our own Midge Raymond’s book. And she gave it a nice review.

Short story collections are a great fit for someone who has to read a book a day. I’m luck to get through a chapter a week.

PS: Now she has a book coming out!

Last week I wrote about the coming of IDNs (internationalized domain names).

But IDNs aren’t the only new country codes to keep your eyes on.

There is also the occasional new Latin-based ccTLD.

Like .IC.

The Canary Islands is looking to get a country code to raise its visibility.

That, and also to bring in a few million dollars in registration fees. Just imagine all the Bay Area startups that would relish a funky new combo-ccTLD name.

Plast.ic.

Elast.ic.

Bombast.ic.

Am I sounding a bit sarcast.ic?

Of course, the gap between asking for a ccTLD and actually getting one can be quite significant. First you have to be included in the ISO 3166-1 list of country codes.

According to Wikipedia, here’s how you do it:

Currently 246 countries, territories, or areas of geographical interest are assigned official codes in ISO 3166-1. According to the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA), the only way to enter a new country name into ISO 3166-1 is to have it registered in one of the following two sources:^[6]

• United Nations Terminology Bulletin Country Names, or
• Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division.

To be listed in the bulletin Country Names, a country must either be:

• A member country of the United Nations,
• A member of one of its specialized agencies, or
• A party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice.

The list of names in Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use of the UN Statistics Division is based on the bulletin Country Names and other UN sources.

Once a country name or territory name appears in either of these two sources, it will be added to ISO 3166-1 by default.

That last I checked, Canary Islands is not on either of these two lists.

That said, I have a feeling that the Canary Islands will get its wish, although it might take some time. The IC acronym has already been reserved on its behalf and the Islands would not be the first autonymous territory to get its own ccTLD. The rest is just lawyers, lobbying, etc.

A global gateway doesn’t have to be fancy. In fact, it shouldn’t be fancy.

It should be as easy to understand as a stop sign. Form and function and nothing else.

You don’t want people getting confused, waiting for animation to load, or just missing it altogether. This happens all the time.

The fashion house Céline sure keeps it simple:

In one page you know exactly what languages the site supports and there is no chance you’ll miss it. I certainly didn’t.

What other global gateways exhibit such minimalism?

It’s now November the 16th in Asia, which means the “Fast Track” has begun.

Here’s the process:

The Fast Track process is only for ccTLDs and only for those countries with non-Latin official languages.

So if you qualify, get your application ready — that and your $26,000 fee.

Offtopic, I know, but I have to share. This is a photo of an eagle I snapped yesterday. Normally, I’m a second too late for these types of pics. Such a beautiful bird.

And there is a globe in the background — from the Seattle PI building — so I could argue that this post is sorta related to globalization.

PS: I’ve posted a few more pics here.