The Google webmaster blog about how to start a multilingual site, with some notes on geotargetting, content organization etc.

Google moved it’s center of Latin American operations to Brazil, where it also develops and manages Orkut.

Minifact: Friendster is focusing on Asia, where it is a significant player.

A nice list of locale switchers (language switches).

Google translation center is pretty cool.

Good description of Mixi, a Japanese social network, and some thoughts on why it might be so popular in Japan.

Live from Bejing: "Whenever I show Chinese websites to American friends who don’t speak Chinese, the friends universally have the same reaction — “Wow! That site sure is crappy-looking! Guess those guys haven’t learned how to design a good website yet, huh?”

"Most Americans are by now nodding their heads: “Yep. Love those US sites. Much more advanced. Clean, simple design. Not cluttered. Guess those Chinese guys will figure that out sooner or later.”

The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market. Global English rocks. Short sentences are easier to read. Clear writing help everyone.

International Address Fields in Web Forms. Good stuff, for example: “This common understanding is so definitive that eyetracking data
suggests, once people begin filling in a set of input fields that make
up an address, they often cease looking at their labels.”

The 1860 US Census is now available online (via) A wonderful historic document with great examples of culturally biased catgories.