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If you own a blog with a focus on internationalization, and want to be added or removed from this aggregator, please get in touch with Richard Ishida at ishida@w3.org.

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Planet Web I18n

The Planet Web I18n aggregates posts from various blogs that talk about Web internationalization (i18n). While it is hosted by the W3C Internationalization Activity, the content of the individual entries represent only the opinion of their respective authors and does not reflect the position of the Internationalization Activity.

November 21, 2009

Global By Design

How do you type € again?

copypastecharacter

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.

by John Yunker at 21 November 2009 10:22 PM

A book day, every day, including Forgetting English

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!

by John Yunker at 21 November 2009 04:26 AM

November 19, 2009

Global By Design

A fantast.ic new country code

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]

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

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.

by John Yunker at 19 November 2009 03:18 PM

November 18, 2009

Global By Design

Minimalism in global gateways

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:

celine_gateway

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?

by John Yunker at 18 November 2009 03:36 AM

November 15, 2009

Global By Design

Eagle over Seattle

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.

eagle_over_pi

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.

by John Yunker at 15 November 2009 06:39 PM


Contact: Richard Ishida (ishida@w3.org).