Hebrew is a hard language

The Google folks are trying to eat their own dog food. But as it turns out, eating from right to left isn't as easy as eating left to right.

You see, the fact that Hebrew is written from right to left has been consuming significant computing resources since,well, the dawn of time I guess.

The issue has been mostly solved back in the 90's when Microsoft forced the "logical display order" standard (a.k.a implicit directionality, RFC 1556 and other names) on the industry.

And yet, check out this Google AdSense ad, appearantly from Google:

This ad translates into the following English nonsense:

Google - free from Gmail

Comfortable GB, less junk mail, 2.8 and more. POP storage, access.

Register today!

Oh well. I am confident that Hebrew (and Arabic) will display perfectly soon after the introduction of peace to the middle east. Don't hold your breath on either one of them though :) .

 

Technorati tags: Google, Gmail, Ad, Hebrew, Right to left, RTL

JPG Mag Submission: theme "America"

MS Yahoo Live

Through Mashable: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion.

This rumor has been around before. It seems to be a tad more real this time - see NYPost article and SearchEngineWatch post for more sources, references and names.

This will be interesting, to say the least.

Will combining the efforts of the somewhat lame Live search engine with the search engine from Yahoo, the company that announced that it has given up being #1 in search create a real competitor for Google's most successful product?

Microsoft has toiled for years to shed off its "home desktop only" positioning and to become an Enterprise player. It wasn't easy, but it worked. Too well maybe. Because now, when Microsoft is trying so hard to join the cool kids playing on the Internet playground, the best it could do so far is the Live suite of services, with its oh-so-integrated but also oh-so-boring services. I hate to pick on stupid details, but did they really think that corporate blue is the best color scheme for Live.com?

Will the Yahoo infusion change this?

Oh boy. I just realized I might end up using Microsoft MSN Live Flickr. Scary thought. Well, in that case I'd like to direct the MS executives reading this post to here : )

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, MSFT, Yahoo, YHOO, acquisition, rumor

Conspiracy Theory

Everyone is talking about the Digg User Generated Revolution (that's UGR for you) story. Good summary over @ Blonde 2.0.

Me, I've got myself a nice little theory. I say that the whole thing is a conspiracy, architected by Kevin Rose and David Sifry so that Technorati has more stuff to index and Digg has more stories to be dugg.

What will be next? Will they be starting a war in the middle east just so that we have something to blog about?

Actually, that wouldn't be very hard to do : )

Oh, I almost forgot the most important bit:

This is a very special secret encoding designed to keep the AACS from discovering this post. Viva la revolución!

Technorati tags: digg, technorati, conspiracy, kevin rose, david sifry, UGR, revolution, HD DVD