J. O'Conner

No matter how many times it happens, I still feel somewhat surprised that companies still don’t know how to gather form data, move it through their database and use it without destroying something as simple as a name. My most recent surprise came just today, this time from Ford Motor Company.

Apparently I had filled out an online form and included my name. Unfortunately, Ford didn’t quite know what to do with the apostrophe in my family name. They turned it into a form similar to an html character entity reference but they seem to have scrubbed out the semi-colon from the “'” reference. Here’s the US postal address they used to reach me recently.

Aah, when will they learn?

After a few years being away from the internationalization crowd, I’m attending the Internationalization and Unicode Conference again this year. How great to see old friends and to make new ones. Some things are new — some new people. However, many things are old or definitely older.

What’s old? Well, for one, the problems. It’s the same problems, over and over again. It seems like every new tool, application, operating system, whatever… they all struggle with internationalization as if it’s a new problem. And it isn’t. After almost two decades in this industry, I still am surprised that we talk about resource bundles, date and time formats, etc. I keep thinking this stuff is resolved and over. But every year, the IUC reminds me that it is not. Every new platform and tool and application will repeat the mistakes of the past and solve these problems yet again and again and again as if they are new. Why is that?

Some things were very new, mainly products and specific technologies. We have new characters in Unicode. Old languages (JavaScript) are getting more internationalization support in some future version. Windows 7. Twitter. And gray hair. That’s definitely new. Some of my very good colleagues in the industry have aged…and it reminds me about my own age and career in internationalization.

About 15 years ago, my friend Bill Hall and I mused that we might be out of a job one day in the internationalization (i18n) industry. Maybe we thought that we and others like us would solve all the internationalization issues and make everyone aware and create libraries that everyone would use everywhere. We really thought that we could work hard, solve all the problems, and finally make our jobs unnecessary or obsolete. Funny thing is that here we are 15 years later, and it’s clear to me now that we didn’t permanently solve any problem. We provided temporary solutions, but nothing permanent. It’s humbling to think that one’s life-work hasn’t made many reusable solutions, but this knowledge does have a silver lining too.

So, I suppose my rant just boils down to this. Welcome to all the new individuals in this industry! All you people at Twitter, those working on Android or Chrome, all you newer Adobe Flash and Flex folks, and all newer individuals representing a host of other companies …. welcome to the internationalization industry and welcome to IUC! You can be happy to know that despite all your hard work today, you will always have a job in this industry tomorrow. You are in a great, vibrant, long-lived career. Despite your best efforts, you probably will never work yourself out of a job! What you do is needed, necessary today and tomorrow, and most likely always will be!

Bitter-sweet? Definitely. Sigh….

Well, the IUC committee made its decision. Although I was initially a little disappointed, the committee declined my session proposal. That’s probably the best; the article was a rehash of an older subject that I already presented long ago. I refreshed the original article and thought I could recycle it. Ha…the IUC wasn’t fooled. The said “NO!”

That’ll teach me. Next time I’ll provide all original content, and I already know what I’ll propose. Timezone selection for web apps. OK, that’s easy you say. Easy peasy. Well, it’s really not. It turns out that it’s pretty easy to pick a locale and time format for a user on the network. But what time zone should you select when displaying time?

That question isn’t always easy to answer. Lots of factors come into play including the locale of the user, the location of the event, the primary location of the site. Which to choose?

I’ll get this written up if you think it’s an interesting subject. Let me know.

I recently purchased the Virgin Mobile 2200 MiFi device. You can read about the device all over the ‘net, and reviews are generally favorable.

The device is primarily advertised as a wifi hotspot for up to 5 devices, but I’ve discovered that I can also tether it to my laptop. Why do that? Well, the device doesn’t have the best battery life. Connecting it to you pc or mac os x laptop will disable the wifi functionality, but it does charge the device. Sometimes you need to be online and charge the device simultaneously, and if you’re the only user, you may not really care if the hotspot wifi is disabled. In this situation, you can tether the device to your laptop, using it as a USB modem.

I used the short ~13-15″ black USB cable to connect the device to my Mac OS X laptop. When I first connected it, my laptop recognized the device and installed drivers. Once the drivers were installed, I rebooted the laptop. The installation added a Novatel Wireless Modem device in my Network settings

The “default” configuration installed the modem as an “Other” vendor, and selected the EVDO support for me.

Using the default settings, I simply clicked on the “connect” button, and I was connected to the internet. I’m typing and posting this blog using the modem functionality not the wifi connection. In fact, you can see that my settings (to the left) show that my only connectivity is my Novatel Modem.

Of course, all this functionality assumes you’ve gone through all the first steps to activate and enable your device. Don’t skip that. Instructions for initial setup are included in your purchase, so I won’t cover those instructions here.

The part that I find interesting is that NOTHING in the included documentation or online documentation will tell you about this USB modem functionality. The only thing said is that your wifi connectivity is disabled when you connect the USB cable to your laptop, which I did find out is true.

I’m generally pleased with the device so far. And it came in particularly useful for me this weekend, when my DSL service was disrupted. The $150 price tag is a bit steep, but the $40/mo unlimited data without a contract is very attractive.

In case I’ve diluted the point of my post, here’s the gist:

1. Attaching the USB cable to your laptop will disable the wifi hotspot feature of the device, but does recharge the device’s battery.
2. Although you can’t connect to the device wirelessly, you can use it as a USB tethered modem.
3. My laptop (and probably yours too) recognized the device and installed appropriate Novatel Wireless Modem drivers.
4. Nothing in the docs tells you that you now have a USB modem, but it does work and allows simultaneous recharging of its batteries while using it.

Using online chat services can be very frustrating, especially when the expert chat professionals just can’t or won’t answer questions. My recent attempt to order Time Warner cable service got weird after a while…admittedly after I couldn’t get an answer about the HD recording capacity I began to wonder if this was a bot.

My transcript follows:

User John_ has entered room
Analyst Paul has entered room

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:50:59 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable Online Customer Service, my name is Paul. May I have your complete name please?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:51:13 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
John

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:51:20 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for providing your name. How may I assist you today?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:51:38 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
What size is the HD DVR box on new service installation?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:51:51 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
How many hours of recordings can I make?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:52:35 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I understand that you would like to know about HD DVR box. Is that correct?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:52:39 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
yes

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:52:49 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I will be glad to assist you.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:53:33 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Hmmmm…Paul are you there?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:53:51 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Yes, I am here to assist you.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:53:57 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I would like to inform you that view our Cable Box Comparison Chart. High-Definition (HD) boxes will provide you access to HD programming. Digital Video Recorder (DVR) boxes will allow you to Pause Live TV, Record 2 shows at once, and Record, and Record 30+ hours of programming. HD-DVR box provides combine the capabilities of the (HD) and (DVR) boxes.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:54:22 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
30+ hours of HD recording?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:55:46 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Please bear with me just a few moments while I research this information for you.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:55:52 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Can I add my own Firewire or USB drive to increase the recording capabilities?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:57:15 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for being online; I am still in the process of checking the information. Please bear with me just a few moments while I research this information for you.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:58:43 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for your patience.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:58:55 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I would like to inform you that you need to contact our local office further information. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 04:59:01 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Would you like me to provide you the number?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:59:37 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
no, that’s not needed.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 01:59:50 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
so, which question is not answerable?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:00:08 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:00:21 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
ok, but which question is difficult?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:00:51 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I do apologize for the inconvenience; unfortunately, this chat support center specializes in online offers.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:01:13 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
of course, I understand that. I want an online order.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:01:23 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
to do that I have questions first.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:01:54 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I will be glad to assist you.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:01:56 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
May I know the services you are interested in?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:02:21 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
well, I bet you can guess at least one of the services…the one named above.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:02:46 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
HD DVR cable service

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:03:29 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for the information.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:03:36 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
May I have your complete address along with the zip code?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:03:52 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
sure, but will you answer my questions?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:05:05 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Paul, you’re making this awkward. I want to order cable service but have a question about the HD recording capacity of the HD DVR machine. Additionally, I’m asking whether I can increase the recording capacity by providing my own external drive.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:06:16 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Please bear with me just a few moments while I research this information for you.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:08:57 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for your patience.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:09:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
I would like to inform you that after installation you can contact our local office in order to increase the recording capacity. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:11:01 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
May I please confirm if you are still connected with this chat session?

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:11:16 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Paul, do you know how much wood a wood-chuck chucks if a wood-chuck could chuck wood?

Paul(Mon Aug 23 2010 05:13:25 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
This chat support center specializes in online offers. I will be more than happy to assist with questions about these offers.

John_(Mon Aug 23 2010 02:14:07 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time))>
Thank you for your help Paul.

Personally, I think I had a ‘bot online. What do you think?

No, I have some other observations about this chat, particularly about the time stamp time zones, but I’ll leave that for another post.

I’ve been working with Java for a dozen years now, actually more. I don’t really want to learn another language, or forget one. I’ve already forgotten perl too many times. But the problem is that I actually do need to learn another language. Java just doesn’t do everything for me.

For example, when I need to process a huge log file and write some data to another file, I don’t really want the overhead of writing in Java. What I want is to scribble something out and run it. I might keep the script around, but I might throw it away too. I need another tool. Perl once did this for me, once long ago. Then for whatever reason, I didn’t need it anymore. Now I need it again, but remembering how many times I’ve forgotten perl, I’m thinking maybe there’s a better language. Maybe there’s something that I can actually remember from week to week as my infrequent needs call upon it.

I’ve been thinking about a few language options:

• Python 
• Ruby
• Bash
• JavaScript

I’ve only read the introduction sections of books about Ruby and Python. Python just irks me with its dependence on space. I’m sure that’s a frequent complaint. For those who overcome that somewhat petty problem, the language seems to satisfy. But something about those procedures and method with __something__ surrounded with those underscore characters. Come on, what’s up with that? But the things that really do appeal to me about Python are the general ideas that explicitness is better that obscurity, that one common way is better than a dozen equally flexible ways, and that there is a best way to do something….well, those ideas are comfortable and appealing.

Ruby is fully object-oriented, and it actually does read nicely. I’m also interested in multiple spoken languages, character sets, etc., and I’m not sure whether it fully embraces Unicode as it’s character set. Maybe there are ways to make it work with UTF-8, but I haven’t quite advanced that far.

Bash? Uh no.

Can you believe that I actually considered Javascript briefly. When run under a vm with the Rhino implementation, your JavaScript code has full access to the JRE class libraries. Used this way, it really is only a way to script Java calls. For what I want, no “native” javascript functions exist to read the underlying file system or to create new files.  Without the boilerplate overhead of a full Java application, I suppose I could squeak out some extra productivity. In the end though, it really is just a way to work with Java code. JavaScript might be great within a browser, but on the file system? Hmmm, probably not.

So what are your ideas about a general purpose scripting language? Is perl still the best choice for system work, moving files around, parsing out some key values and writing them elsewhere? Did you move to Python and finally just accept the annoying white space issue? Or is Ruby a good tool for me. What do you know about these? Any suggestions?

Thanks!

We’ve already decided that determining a timezone for a desktop application is easy. It’s too easy, and so let’s not even waste our time there. Instead, let’s think about something more difficult: how do you determine the timezone of a visitor to your website?

If your site authenticates users, you have most of your problem solved. Along with your user’s preference for username, password, and favorite soccer team (if soccer is your web site’s focus), you can encourage users to register their locale and timezone. This really isn’t so much to ask, not if you are going to offer them rich, useful, or entertaining content.

So ask for a timezone preference! When you ask, however, make sure you ask for something more useful than a simple UTC time offset. Knowing that a visitor is in a UTC-8:00 time zone is helpful but not as helpful as knowing that that same visitor is in the Los Angeles/America time zone. The latter option obviously provides more information about the user. Of course, the Los Angeles/America time zone tells your system that a visitor requires a UTC-8 offset, but it also differentiates this user from someone in Canada that may use the same hour:minute offset. It’s more information! More information usually translates into a better user experience, especially if you take care to utilize that information to customize the experience.

It is also possible to get the browser’s default timezone using a bit of JavaScript. Is this the user’s preference? Maybe, maybe not, but it is available. I’ve heard arguments that suggest that this is not the correct timezone to use. However, my opinion is emphatically this: the timezone of the user’s host pc is probably the best thing you have available in the absence of a specific user preference setting. Yes, people move around; yes, a user can visit your site on the west coast one day and then the east coast the next day without changing the pc setting.

var d = new Date();

var tzOffset = d.getTimezoneOffset();

Is this perfect? No, not at all. In fact, this javascript really just provides a minute value offset from GMT and local time. Still, for formatting a time with a correct timezone offset, this is useful.

If you don’t use a user preference setting in your app or a bit of JavaScript to query your visitor’s host timezone, what else do we have? Hmm…that’s an interesting question. What else is available for determining the timezone of a user visiting your site? Well, they do have an IP address. There are public services and databases that attempt to map this for you, but I just don’t know how accurate this is. I suppose I don’t have any specific reason to doubt its viability; it certainly seems possible at some level. But I’ve not actually spoken with anyone that has used this accurately or successfully. If you have, let me know.

Until next time!

Looking for a new position? EMC is looking for an Internationalization Consultant! I can’t take it, but maybe you can.

Summary

The Internationalization Consultant is responsible for participating in planning and discovery sessions, providing consultation on I18N requirements and optimal business/engineering process design, overall status assessments, and contributing to the campaign for education and awareness of I18N standards for product design and development throughout the enterprise.

More Information

For more information, you should check out the EMC job listing directly. Or search their job listings for requisition id #55885BR.

Web applications have an unusual problem regarding timezones and formatted, user-viewable dates for a few reasons:

• several timezones are usually involved, and the determination of which should be used isn’t particularly clear
• date formatting code for even a modest list of locales isn’t available in browsers by default

Timezones Everywhere

Desktop applications have it pretty simple. Their users work on a host, and that host has a configured timezone. Windows and Mac users have convenient access to those settings in their “System Properties” or “Control Panel”. If a desktop application needs to display the date or create a time, it has access to the local host timezone. Usually there’s no question…this is the correct timezone for an application to use. If a user temporarily relocates to a different timezone, the user is responsible for changing that setting in his system settings.

Web applications have potentially several timezones to juggle as they manipulate time:

• client timezone
• server timezone
• event location timezone
• site timezone
• user account timezone

The client timezone is the computer’s system timezone — the timezone set within system properties or the control panel. This timezone is controlled on the local desktop or host environment. JavaScript in a browser has indirect access to this host provided timezone, and that timezone is available as the default — and usually the only — timezone available to a browser-confined application.

The server timezone is the timezone of the physical server on which your application runs. In a global, world-wide application, this server timezone is probably the least relevant of all the timezones because a server can be almost anywhere in the world and is most likely not representative of the user majority.

The event location timezone is the timezone of an actual event; it is the physical event’s location. For example, world cup soccer matches are held in South Africa this year. It might be tempting to use the event’s timezone when publishing soccer match times. Unfortunately, if I’m a Brazilian fan trying to determine a game time, the South African timezone and time display may not be useful and may be confusing. Here’s an example from a Google search page that shows game times for a U.S. English-speaking user:

The site timezone is the timezone associated with the web app’s domain or site. Let’s use world cup soccer again. Yahoo has dedicated sports sites for various locales/regions around the globe. For example, sports.yahoo.com is primarily the U.S. site, but it has navigational links to allow a user to go to other regional versions of the sports.yahoo.com experience. If you look at a similar schedule of existing or upcoming games, you’ll notice that Yahoo chooses to display times using the site’s timezone.

One view of upcoming games looks like this on the U.S. English site. Notice that it uses Eastern Daylight Time for the site’s timezone:

A different look from the Brazilian site shows this. Note that the times use the BRT timezone:

The point here is simple: you have lots of choices for displaying time and time zones to your users. Making the choice is difficult. Once you’ve determined which zone to use, the technical issues aren’t nearly as hard to solve.

In this specific blog, I’ll not solve the technical aspects of displaying time in the proper time zone and format, but I will leave you with my personal suggestion. In general, I think a web site should use as much information as it has available to customize information and to present it clearly to its users. For times and dates, it makes sense to me to present that information in the timezone and format that the user is accustomed to seeing. If your site knows that I’m a U.S. English speaker, maybe you should at least display times using a U.S. timezone. Of course, some regions have multiple zones, and that becomes a new problem. However, in the case of the U.S, which has multiple zones, a California resident is probably more likely to know that EDT is a 3 hour offset. It is doubtful that most California residents would know immediately that South African time is …. well …. some other offset. You see, the South African timezone just doesn’t help me much if I intend to actually watch or record the event. EDT is at least a bit more familiar.

There you have it…some ideas about timezones and their display. Use what your site knows about users to display information. The more localized in formats, the better in my opinion.

Japanese language students must learn 196 additional Kanji to consider themselves literate. These additional characters will be added to the already daunting 1945 characters that are part of the “Joyo Kanji” list, which brings the total count to 2136. Joyo kanji are the basic, fundamental characters of the language…the minimal set that an adult or post high school person should know.

I remember my college days learning Japanese. I thought I was pretty good to have learned the Joyo kanji in my 4 year career. At this point 4 years would barely be enough for me to choke down the additional requirements.

I think the motivation for adding the characters is interesting. As you might imagine, it is much easier to recognize a written kanji than it is to write it oneself. In this digital age, we have lots of help writing kanji. Input methods make it…dare I say…almost easy to write kanji. And since we read so much more than we typically write, and since input methods simplify text entry, we don’t really have to worry about recalling every stroke of any kanji. The software handles this for us nicely. So, not particularly concerned that students be able to accurately write the new characters, Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs has added these characters with the primary hope that students should at least read and recognize them.

You can learn a bit more about the Joyo Kanji:

• Joyo Kanji
• Overhaul of Official Kanji