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Heads up for 1234567890 day!

Posted by on 12 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: software engineering, time, Vancouver

1000000000 seconds since the POSIX epoch, as celebrated in Denmark in 2001During a high school class, my teacher interrupted his discussion of classical Greek history to say, “it’s twelve thirty-four on the fifth of June, 1978”. In other words, 12:34 5/6/78 (in the British notation). Alert people in the United States had already celebrated that moment on May 6th. If you missed that moment, you have another chance on Friday: 1234567890 day.

Humans love to find patterns, and dates have rich potential for that. For instance, I was walking through a train station on a business trip in Tokyo in February, 1990. I noticed that people were making an unusual fuss about the train tickets. 1990 was 平成2年 , or “Heisei year 2”, in the calendar based on the Japanese era name. The date was printed on the train tickets as “H2-2-2”. The symmetry made them collectors items. (I wish I could lay my hands on a ticket from that day, to convince myself I didn’t invent this memory…)

I have a fondness for finding leaks in the software engineering abstractions that represent our messy real world.  I wrote last year about POSIX time, and the limitations in its representation of modern calendars and time zones. So when a leaky abstractions turns up as a pretty pattern, it’s irresistible.  And that’s what happens this Friday.

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IIMA talk: “…successful multilingual web strategy”

Posted by on 31 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: meetings and conferences, multilingual, Vancouver

Right!  I was supposed to announce this three weeks ago!

I’ve posted the slides from my Dec 10 presentation, “Expand your reach with a successful multilingual web strategy”.  I gave this talk to the  Vancouver chapter of the International Internet Marketing Association (IIMA)’s monthly meeting.

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International and multilingual Drupal sites

Posted by on 22 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: CMS, drupal, i18n, meetings and conferences, Vancouver

International and multilingual Drupal sitesI gave a presentation about “International and multilingual Drupal sites” to the friendly folks at the Vancouver Drupal Users Group on November 20, 2008. Follow the link above to see the slides.

This was a great opportunity for me to investigate Drupal 6’s internationalisation (i18n). As part of the research for my paper, I set up a basic Drupal 6 site with UI strings and content translated into Japanese and English languages. I found that Drupal 6 has very good support for multilingual site hosting. However, there were some tricky aspects to installing the right modules and then setting up the system configuration. I summarise them in the presentation, but it’s probably worth writing some better documentation.

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Jim is a panelist at the Internet Marketing Conference, Vancouver, Sept 12

Posted by on 07 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: culture, i18n, language, meetings and conferences, Vancouver

Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver, September 11-12, 2008I’m going to be a panelist at the Internet Marketing Conference Vancouver 2008, which runs from September 11-12, 2008. The panel is called “Writing for the Web“. It is full of experts on writing — and then there’s me. I’ll be approaching from the topic crosswise, talking about international and multilingual issues. In other words, how your writing is affected if it will be translated, or is part of a multinational project.

The panelists are an interesting bunch. I’m looking forward to meeting them. They are:

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Jim presents to Joomla Day Vancouver this Saturday, June 14, 2008

Posted by on 11 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: CMS, i18n, Joomla, meetings and conferences, multilingual, Vancouver

There is a Joomla! Day in Vancouver this Saturday. I’ll be giving a brief presentation, on jdlh.com as an example of a multilingual Joomla! website, with human-friendly URLs.

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Multilingual blogs and websites at Northern Voice 2008

Posted by on 28 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: meetings and conferences, multilingual, Vancouver

Last week was Northern Voice 2008 (Feb 22-23), a blogger’s conference here in Vancouver. It was held in UBC’s beautiful Forest Sciences Centre, in and around a pleasant sunny atrium lined with gorgeous wood panelling.

I convened a session on multilingual blogs and websites. I was interested in the issues that arise when we try to do all that cool blog or website activity in a second and third language. The first language is no problem; modern tools can handle almost any single language.

A great group of about 15 people joined in. We put our discussion notes on a page on the Northern Voice wiki (http://wiki.northernvoice.ca/Multilingual+blogs), so check that out to see what we discussed.

I walked in with a categorisation of the issues that arise as a website goes multilingual. This held up well in the discussion. Maybe you’ll find it helpful too.

  • Examples: who’s doing it in multiple languages, and how well?
  • Value: who needs multiple languages and what for?
  • Structure: how to link content in one language to another?
  • Content: is content in various languages the same or different? How/why different?
  • Tools: how to make your blogging system or service or CMS handle the text and connect to your translators?
  • Translation: how to get the content from one language to the other?
  • Process: how to make all the parts move together and on time?

I’m really interested in multilingual websites as a way to structure thought about world-ready technology, and as a focus for my consulting practice. Expect to hear more about it.

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