The National Library is archiving New Zealand web sites without your permission and with little or no consultation with Maori? The project is called New Zealand Web Harvest 2010. It is now seeking comments on past issues that have been raised by mainly the technical community. I see no Maori concerns or consideration. Web Harvest … Read more
The latest Google Doodle competition that recently announced the finalists provoked an old thought regarding the Google Aotearoa logo for the Visit Google’s Site in “Your Local Domain” page where Aotearoa is not shown in the listings. The Google Wiki tool for Google Aotearoa is also in English much to my surprise. But I am … Read more
Google announced today. It was made possible by Dr Te Taka Keegan of the University of Waikato while on secondment to Google. Google Translate Toolkit is a translation tool that is edited by humans not automated by computers such as Google Translate. Google Toolkit relies on the community to add words and translations. It then … Read more
A number of months ago the professional networking site LinkedIn announced the ability to offer multilingual professional profiles via a set of existing languages and custom language options. The task is simple and can be used for any language in the world no matter how small the language population may be. Bilingual profiles in English … Read more
Twitter today announced that it would offer Twitter interface in multiple languages with other languages to be offered in the future. Currently Twitter is available in two languages English and Japanese. Twitter are calling for volunteers to assist with translating Twitter into French, Italian, German, and Spanish. The Twitter team have made it clear that … Read more
For many years there have always been small groups of people fighting for what they believe is a natural right – to have software and online services presented in Māori. Most groups are short lived while others achieve results, often in a modest fashion. One-day translation issues and will not be an issue, it will … Read more
It is not uncommon for web sites to be bi or multilingual considering our international relationships and use of native languages on the Internet. But often there is little or no consideration for Search Engine Optimisation in the non English languages as they are not viewable upon reading the site. By following the above practice … Read more
For many Indigenous Peoples and any other organisation it is common to prepare to register your domain name only to find that someone has cyber squatted it or perhaps a member is using it for their own use. Too often groups are confined to thinking that if their name is not available in the .com, … Read more
Issue 1: An immediate issue for Māori Language is the use of the umlaut (äëïöü). There are two issues here. (a) For many years the umlaut was implemented as an alternative for the macron and is widely accepted as a macron. It is quite likely that a user with Māori fonts will use an umlaut … Read more
Two days ago I wrote at my disbelief and sadness of the lack of innovation that was being used by Māori Language advocates. While no public comments appeared on my blog, my cell phone and email certainly were busy with people questioning me and seeking advise. Not to mention those people who reminded me that … Read more
Recently and with minimal media attention in New Zealand and the Pacific, the ability to write non English characters into Web addresses became a reality for many of the worlds popular extensions such as .com, .org, .net, .tv and so on. Thus giving Māori the ability to correctly spell macron Māori words in web addresses, … Read more
.indigi is a new Internet domain name that will be the self governing Indigenous equivalent of the .com or .org . In late December 2008 i was appointed the Leader for this initiative which can be found at www.dotIndigi.com . While preparing our policy paper on .indigi i am often asked the same questions by … Read more
We are at the end of another Māori Language week here in Aotearoa New Zealand. Most of us have seen and heard Māori language being spoken in mainstream radio, television and newspaper. The children’s television program “Sponge Bob” was also in Māori language. But alas!, the uptake of social media to promote Māori language has … Read more
Many Māori and Pacific Peoples use alternative names to their birth names, often adopting an English name to be known by outside of the family. This is also a common practice with many non English speaking cultures in Asia. FaceBook.com in their quest to recognise the multilingual world we live in, today announced a new … Read more
FaceBook to offer vanity URL’s the Saturday. The consequences of not getting the right name for your organisation are significant.
Page squatting or Cyber Squatting also with sellable ads for sale are becoming popular in FaceBook and Twitter.
I am investigating how to create macrons the iPhone. I must admit to feeling like i have gone back 13 and more years in my career to the days when i worked on macron technology for web sites and the PC. Thankfully a task that is now simple and requires little cognition. Like the old days ASCII … Read more
