Internet filtering
- Process by which users accessing the Internet from a particular network are blocked from visiting certain Web sites
- Can be done at various levels: the household, local business, residential networks, Internet service providers (ISPs), regional network or national gateway level
- China’s filtering system is widely known as the “Great Firewall of China”
Chinese residents are without sites where content is predominantly user generated
- Chinese equivalent of these sites remain available
- One possible explanation to block major foreign sites and not their domestic equivalents is that the Chinese government might be more concerned about international criticism than internal tension.
- Foreign website is always slower than local competitors and sometimes stall out the user’s browser
Chinese government uses four mechanisms to prevent users from reaching blacklisted Web sites or content
- DNS blocking, Reset commands, URL keyword blocking and Content scanning
- Filtering is achieved by plugging “blacklisted” Web site addresses and keywords into the routers and software systems
- Controlling Internet traffic across Chinese domestic networks and at the gateway points between the domestic and the global Internet
If a user has downloaded forbidden content
- It breaks the connection and prohibits the user from establishing communications with the site
- These blackouts can last anywhere from two minutes to an hour or more
Government justifies its Internet monitoring efforts
- by saying it is keeping online information "wholesome" free of threats such as sexual predators
Physical access to the Internet is provided by
- nine state-licensed Internet Access Providers (IAP)
- each has at least one connection to a foreign Internet backbone
- it is through these connections that Chinese Internet users access Internet websites hosted outside of China
All companies running Web sites in China
- Are required to comply with government censorship demands in order to keep their business licenses.
Politically sensitive content is deleted
- from the Web by employees, or programs in response to official directives or in anticipation of trouble
Web sites hosted outside of China
- containing Chinese–language content targeted at a mainland Chinese audience, are asked to prevent the publication of certain politically sensitive content,
- Or face the possibility of being blocked
While some foreign companies have opted not to comply and SOME have complied to varying degrees
- Yahoo! and Microsoft offer censored versions of their search engines to the Chinese market in order to maintain good government relations and their business operations in China
Government regulatory bodies issue directives to companies
- about what kinds of content should be controlled, BUT the finer details of implementation are left to the companies
- Rewards and punishments are meted out based on the extent to which Internet companies successfully prevent politically inflammatory topics
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
What to do? Local or Global?
I know its been long since I've written, but you know its better late than never blog about such an intimidating topic!
I have been having this privilege multiple times for now to work with these groups of people, where we talk about the same thing everytime. Even though the discussions each time are very different, the way the discussions are framed and what issues are focused on are different, the issue has been the same - How to "Think Globally, Work Locally"?
BUT, I think, in midst of all these, we all seem to forget which matters the most "When?" and "What?" is Local or Global? We always seem to forget the fact "What You See Is What You Get". I've been recently involved in this one Localization project and also one global service deployment project, that work must be local, & focused on the global, solving the problem of "How to handle global and local content for global service? A question that has as many answers as intranets!"
Anyways, While i was busy in these Bonding globally, people failed to see if i was Building locally ;)
I have been made to beleive that because organizations are stronger at the local level and individuals are closer to the people who make the decisions, Unless the change is local, no global result is useful.
BUT on the other side I know that, Unless we have a global determination and global arrangements, we cannot have the desired achievement and results, which is vital for any interconnection between local and global.
Finally, I'd say, THINK global, WORK local BUT most importantly "ACT both" !!!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
What is Localization, Internationalization and Globalization?
There was a need for me to look into the topic of i18n, but could not find a short, good description of the terminology and had to search a lot. Now that I have it, want to make it easy for others, so here it is ...
Localization:
• Adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market (a "locale"). Sometimes written as "l10n", where 10 is the number of letters between 'l' and 'n'.
• This Includes
1. Translating text content, software source code, web sites, or database content; machine translation may be used in early stages.
2. Adjusting graphic and visual elements and examples to make them culturally appropriate
Internationalization
• Design and development of a product, application or document content that enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language. Often written "i18n", where 18 is the number of letters between 'i' and 'n'
• Typically entails:
1. Designing and developing in a way that removes barriers to localization or international deployment. Includes things such as Enabling the use of Unicode
2. Providing support for features that may not be used until localization occurs, like Adding markup in your DTD to support bidirectional text, or for identifying language
3. Enabling code to support local, regional, language, or culturally related preferences. Involves, like user preferences of date and time formats.
4. Separating localizable elements from source code or content
Globalization
• An approach to business strategy that aims to address all of the logistical and organizational challenges an enterprise faces as it expands its supporting content, assets and message across cultures and markets to new clients.
• Incorporates internationalization and localization to achieve this goal.
• Describes a comprehensive process that incorporates, augments, and extends:
1. Research on and identification of global markets
2. Market validation and selection
4. Identification and formalization of global business requirements
5. Identification of cross-market affinities (to enable marketing and technology asset reuse)
6. Alignment with and support for Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n) processes.
Internationalization Vocabulary
• Character encodings are byte-stream representations for individual characters, like US-ASCII, ISO Latin 1, Shift-JIS, Big-5, UTF-8, etc.
• Character vs. glyph: A character, also known as a code point, is a unique character within a set of characters, also known as a code page. A glyph is merely the visual representation of a character
• Language Designations, like ISO 639-1/ ISO 639-2: uses a two/three letter code to identify a language
• Regional Designations, like ISO 3166-1:uses a two-letter, capitalized code to identify a specific country
• Language ID
1. Designates a written language (or orthography) and can reflect either the generic language or a specific dialect of that language
2. To specify a language ID, you use a language designator by itself. To specify a specific dialect of a language, you use a hyphen to combine a language designator with a region designator
3. Thus, the English language as it is spoken in Great Britain would yield a language ID of en-GB, while the English language spoken in the United States would have a language ID of en-US
• Locale ID
1. Identifies a specific location where a given language is spoken
2. To specify a locale ID, use an underscore character to combine a language designator with a region designator
3. The locale ID for English-language speakers in Great Britain is en_GB, while the locale for English-speaking residents of the United States is en_US
4. Although locale IDs and language IDs might seem nearly identical, there is a subtle difference: A language ID identifies a written and spoken language only AND A locale identifies a region and its conventions and has a more cultural context.
• Locales are identified as the tuple
1. en, en_US, en_US_SouthernDrawl, en_US == en-us
2. Note that the language is lowercase and the country is uppercase
3. In Java, these are separated by an underscore
4. Browsers lowercase everything and separate them with a dash to send the locale identifiers in the Accept-Language header of the HTTP request
Localization:
• Adaptation of a product, application or document content to meet the language, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market (a "locale"). Sometimes written as "l10n", where 10 is the number of letters between 'l' and 'n'.
• This Includes
1. Translating text content, software source code, web sites, or database content; machine translation may be used in early stages.
2. Adjusting graphic and visual elements and examples to make them culturally appropriate
Internationalization
• Design and development of a product, application or document content that enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language. Often written "i18n", where 18 is the number of letters between 'i' and 'n'
• Typically entails:
1. Designing and developing in a way that removes barriers to localization or international deployment. Includes things such as Enabling the use of Unicode
2. Providing support for features that may not be used until localization occurs, like Adding markup in your DTD to support bidirectional text, or for identifying language
3. Enabling code to support local, regional, language, or culturally related preferences. Involves, like user preferences of date and time formats.
4. Separating localizable elements from source code or content
Globalization
• An approach to business strategy that aims to address all of the logistical and organizational challenges an enterprise faces as it expands its supporting content, assets and message across cultures and markets to new clients.
• Incorporates internationalization and localization to achieve this goal.
• Describes a comprehensive process that incorporates, augments, and extends:
1. Research on and identification of global markets
2. Market validation and selection
4. Identification and formalization of global business requirements
5. Identification of cross-market affinities (to enable marketing and technology asset reuse)
6. Alignment with and support for Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n) processes.
Internationalization Vocabulary
• Character encodings are byte-stream representations for individual characters, like US-ASCII, ISO Latin 1, Shift-JIS, Big-5, UTF-8, etc.
• Character vs. glyph: A character, also known as a code point, is a unique character within a set of characters, also known as a code page. A glyph is merely the visual representation of a character
• Language Designations, like ISO 639-1/ ISO 639-2: uses a two/three letter code to identify a language
• Regional Designations, like ISO 3166-1:uses a two-letter, capitalized code to identify a specific country
• Language ID
1. Designates a written language (or orthography) and can reflect either the generic language or a specific dialect of that language
2. To specify a language ID, you use a language designator by itself. To specify a specific dialect of a language, you use a hyphen to combine a language designator with a region designator
3. Thus, the English language as it is spoken in Great Britain would yield a language ID of en-GB, while the English language spoken in the United States would have a language ID of en-US
• Locale ID
1. Identifies a specific location where a given language is spoken
2. To specify a locale ID, use an underscore character to combine a language designator with a region designator
3. The locale ID for English-language speakers in Great Britain is en_GB, while the locale for English-speaking residents of the United States is en_US
4. Although locale IDs and language IDs might seem nearly identical, there is a subtle difference: A language ID identifies a written and spoken language only AND A locale identifies a region and its conventions and has a more cultural context.
• Locales are identified as the tuple
1. en, en_US, en_US_SouthernDrawl, en_US == en-us
2. Note that the language is lowercase and the country is uppercase
3. In Java, these are separated by an underscore
4. Browsers lowercase everything and separate them with a dash to send the locale identifiers in the Accept-Language header of the HTTP request
Being Successful Employee and Successful Organization
When it comes to being employee, I believe we all are super motivated employees, BUT when it comes to being successful, unless we CONNECT to the company's goals and its mission, it becomes very difficult to achieve maximum success. Success is built on connections we make with people and ideas. Whether it's connecting with customers to improve their service experience, or connecting with the strategic business plan and objectives, the foundation for success starts with CONNECTing.
The SEVEN core competencies needed to connect individuals and organizations are:
Commit to win
Open up to opportunities
Notice what's needed and do what's necessary
Navigate by your purpose
Execute ethically
Challenge your challenges
Transcend beyond your best.
I am reading the book "CONNECT" by Keith Harrell and Hattie Hill, And I guess it a MUST READ book, especially now in this turbulent times. These core competencies mentioned are needed to connect individuals and organizations in order to heighten productivity and to maximize personal and professional success are revealed.
Enjoy Reading !!!
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