Saturday, January 31, 2009

Internet Idiosyncrasy #1

When I first got down here, I was initially surprised that all the major web pages – MSN, Yahoo, Google were in Spanish!!!! Wait a minute! I’m in Mexico. The “Internet” knows I’m in Mexico. No, it’s not big brother watching me. It’s those funny numbers like 123.456.789.012 that do it. Every computer connected to the Internet has at least one of those strings of numbers that identify it. It just so happens that the first part of the number identifies the country the computer is in and a lot of the programmers who build websites use it to decide which language to use. There are ways to find the English language page that you were used to and making it a favorite or bookmark so you can always get English. Usually there’s a link at the bottom of the Spanish page that will to English. Most of you probably know that stuff; I thought I’d mention it just in case. BTW, this website comes up in Spanish till I log in. Once I do, it’s in English because my account specifies I use English.

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