Archive for September, 2008

Localisation part 3 : Customisation

As discussed earlier, localisation generally depends on skinability. Often too, localisation will require a deeper level of adaptive behaviour: This is the role of customisation. In fact, localistion projects are often hybrids (blended localisation *and* customisation projects).
In what follows, remember that the topic is about retroffitting the adaptations needed to support localisation. In brand new [...]

massively parallel processing

The overall gist is that these 2 guys have 2 bots: one that illustrates graphics processing via a CPU, and another which illustrates graphics processing via a GPU. The audience’s reaction in this is priceless, but you gotta stick around toward the end where they show the ‘GPU’ bot doing it’s thang in slow mo’. [...]

Gates and Seinfeld : trust me, this will work.

You should, and will, wince. You may, or may not, laugh. But by God you *will* talk about it, and the new ad guy at Microsoft (I forget the hotshot’s name) knows it too well.
Forget branding… This is psychology 101. It’s called a “pattern interrupt”. Pattern interrupts are never enjoyable for the people whose heads [...]

localising software part 2: reskinning and more

If you’ve read part one of this topic, you’re ready to look at the two main types of presentation-level adaption : re-skinning and localisation. The end-result for this phase of activity is fairly simple:
1) To arrive at a new version of the application that looks like, and behaves like the old one, but with all [...]

localising software Part 1: retrofitting adaptive behavior

Sooner or later, a modern software app will need to spread its wings and go global, making itself available everywhere – or failing that, at least available in lots of different countries. Or failing that, available to lots of different regions. Or clients. No matter what the type of spread is, the inevitability of catering to [...]

Frak this! Galactica’s linguistic legacy.

So apparently, the word ‘Frak’ is fast becoming everyone’s favourite swearword. The ingenuity of the word Frak lies in its phonetic similarity to its grosser cousin. It wouldn’t work half as well as the other word if it didn’t sound so completely like it. And yet it isn’t that other word… a fact that has [...]