Kindof off-topic, but - am I the only one that hates it if there's a link on the web that redirects to a country specific site and presents itself in a language that your browser doesn't ask for, the user doesn't want and that's only 'correct' if you're looking at a f..ing ip address?
I quit most Google services because of this single annoyance (they have seriously neat hebrew sites as well. If an application wants to use my Google account and I'm over there, I have to guess which button says yes and which says no)..
I apologize for the rant. This is just barely on topic here as the worst possible user experience and I hope services of YC people don't think that i18n/l10n isn't that easy.
Right on. I particularly hate sites like myspace and some blogging platforms that translate the window dressing (button labels, sidebar, etc.) to your local language based on IP address, with no regard to the language that the page's actual content is written in.
I ran into this the other day when routing through Slicehost VPS via a SOCKS proxy (I was on a hotel's unsecured WiFi). Google.com kept redirecting to google.com.hk and was all in Chinese. Nuts. Even more strange was that my IP was showing from St. Louis, which is pretty far from China.
I quit most Google services because of this single annoyance (they have seriously neat hebrew sites as well. If an application wants to use my Google account and I'm over there, I have to guess which button says yes and which says no)..
I apologize for the rant. This is just barely on topic here as the worst possible user experience and I hope services of YC people don't think that i18n/l10n isn't that easy.