I just read a comment by Peter on my European Silicon valley post, and he mentions once again one of the biggest reasons why Europe is having problems with keeping up with the Americans. There are just to many languages (that is more than one). The solution most European startups now use is just to make an English version and forget about the rest.. That might work to get the American and Uk market, and also the more tech savvy people from other countries, but the majority in French, Germany and Spain (thats South America and Mexico too) just won’t use it. And if you’re idea is good, you will see a translated copy of your idea sooner or later. And personally I really like those sites that make an effort to have a Dutch version (although many times I stick to English), just because they are showing that they understand that not the whole world is English.

Problem: Only a few sites are multilingual, and therefore most of them will miss the mass-market in Europe

Reason 1: It is harder to build a multilingual site
So why are there so few sites multilingual.. well first thing it’s harder to build, you can’t use “hard coded” text anymore, everything needs to be variable, that is a problem that is a bit harder to solve, so I leave that up to the tech guys.

Reason 2: It’s expensive to hire translators
To get a site multilingual you need people to translate it, and this is expensive stuff, and many not all, don’t understand much of the web stuff, so you have to let someone check all their translations too.

Solution: Build a site that enables everyone to make translations in their own language
Many of the words on websites are used over and over again everywhere, words and sentences as “click here”, “subscribe”, “search”, “login”, “add to cart” etc. All those words are also already translated by people a million times. So wouldn’t it be a great idea to save all these translations in one big database where everyone can add new translations, and ask for more translations. If that file is downloadable you can just check all the words you need, load them in your database and your site is multilingual from day one!

Bonus features: Packages and Plugins
You can make packages too like “shop”, “forum”, “web2.0 site” etc. And you can check how many languages you want to download at first. And someone could build a Wordpress plug in (well there is one already) and a PHPBB plugin and a Vanilla forum plugin and so much more

Problems: Fuck ups
It has to be open so it’s easy to fuck up. It are the people that don’t speak nine languages that download those packages, so after a while there should be some “official” release by people who are to “trusted”

Questions
Q: Why is this different than a wiktionary
A: It isnt really, its just more focused on sites and not on everything, and for every “item” there can only be one translation, not many.

Q: Are you really the first to come up with this?
A: Don’t know, couldn’t find any other initiatives, it would be cool if it’s already been solved though.

Q: What will happen to the words specific to my site that are not on the translation site?
A: The original English (or native) text of your site will fill up that gap. My believe is that a half translated site is still better than not a translation at all

Comments and questions are all welcome in the comments section

Sometimes I come across people who use Photoshop in a different way than me. So I decided to tell a bit more about the way I use it. Although Photoshop puts almost any shortcut in the action-menu, you might not have made it a common habit to use them all. If you are serious about Photoshop, I would recommend learning the shortcuts for the actions you use on daily base (write the things you have to do down and practice it a few times, within minutes you’ll never forget it again). Not only it save time, it also reduces the time you use the mouse, and thereby the change you get RSI.

I hardly use Photoshop for photos though, it’s all webdesign. So if you are planning to do a lot with photos you might want to look at an other list of shortcuts. Here I focus mainly on the keys I use for webdesign. So lets assume you want to make prototypes and wire-frames of websites with Photoshop, In order to plan ahead, and make clients happy without actually having to code.

Trough the years I learned some shortcuts to handle Photoshop much quicker, many you probably already know, but some might come in hand.

first the single keys (just push the key to select the function)

V move tool, first push V, than keep the cntrl pushed down, and than click with the left mouse button on any object to select it, and move it around. Knowing this shortcut increased my Photoshop speed by 40% I think, you never need to look things up in the layer-pallet anymore.
A (arrow) Comes in hand to change vector objects, make sure it’s the white colored angle, so you can change vector objects)
M (marquee) make a selection
W (wizard) make a selection based on the colors
F push f and you switch to another view of Photoshop (push F four times and you are back where you begun)
Tab hides the pallets (push 3 times F and one time tab, and you have an empty screen)
T selects the text edit function, push T, click on a text field and you can edit it. Push cntrl+T to get yourself out of the text field again.
B brush (click anywhere in the document with the right mouse button to change the properties)
I eyedropper-tool - to select a color.
G fill bucket - most used by me in the combination of I (select a color) V + left click, G + left click, to fill a layer with the color of an other one.
Z - zoom use it in combination with ctrl + = or ctrl + - to zoom in and out quickly
Spacebar - keep the spacebar pushed down, click left, and move your mouse to move to the document.

Those where the key’s I used more often, you can check the whole alphabet if you want to know the secret behind every key. Now lets move on the the shortcuts

Shortcuts

shift + cntrl + alt + s save for the web, my most used combination saves your file for the web
alt + I + I changes image size
cntrl + A select all
cntrl + shift + C copy all layers
cntrl + V past image in new layer
cntrl + D deselects the selection again
cntrl + N and cntrl + v gives you an image in a new document
cntrl + R gives you rulers around the document (in properties you can set the distance in pixels instead of inch)
cntr + ; show the line guides, you can create and move them by pushing V and start dragging from the ruler to the document
in the view menu you can change if objects should snap to rulers
cntrl + T transform the object; standard on making it smaller or bigger, but if you click right on the object, you’ll get more options to change the object. Use cntrl+ Enter to do the transformation, or esc to escape it again.
cntrl + E merges to current layer with the one bellow
shift + cntrl + J cut out the current selection and put it into a new layer

This is about it, if you know more handy photoshop tricks, please fill me in on the comments. Thanks!