This article explores the basic concepts behind character encoding and then takes a dive deeper into the technical details of encoding systems.

If you have just a basic knowledge of character encoding and want to better understand the essentials, the differences between encoding systems, why we sometimes end up with nonsense text, and the principles behind different encoding system architecture, then read on.

Getting to understand character encoding in detail requires some extensive reading and a good chunk of time. I’ve tried to save you some of that effort by bringing it all together in one place while providing what I believe to be a pretty thorough background of the topic.

I’m going to go over how single-byte encodings (ASCII, Windows-1251 etc.) work, the history of how Unicode came to be, the Unicode-based encodings UTF-8, UTF-16 and how they differ, the specific features, compatibility, and lack thereof among various encodings, character encoding principles, and a practical guide to how characters are encoded and decoded.

In rising markets, e-commerce has been developing exponentially, and at a cost may soon exceed the developed countries in 2018. As, e-commerce achieves higher goals in developing countries, and it will defeat barriers to adopt high-speed networks which are fast enough for mobiles and shipping prices.

• 17 million installs in 150 countries
• Localization into 35 languages
• 10-15 minutes average photo editing time
• An army of designers and moderators in various countries
• Available in the App Store and Google Play, as well as the Amazon AppStore and the Samsung Galaxy Store

We've developed a unified four-layer model for app promotion and added our recommendations.

Before we wrote this article we had our apps downloaded over two million times, ran about 50 large promotional campaigns, and made it onto the App Store top-lists in over 24 countries to finally combine all of it into a single workflow.

You won’t find almost any obvious stuff about keywords, nice-looking icons, screenshots, or ad campaigns in this article. We’ve tried to develop a unified model for a product-focused company based on our experience by answering the questions “What? When? Why?” and even “And what then?”

If you’re developing your own app, want to start developing one, or just have a friend who’s a developer or marketing professional at a product-focused company, you’ll find lots of useful information in this article.

Why do some people get rich off of their ideas, and others are not able to reach even 100 customers? The renowned Stanford University, which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, offers a course where students can learn the recipes for founding a successful startup. This course is also available as an audio podcast and on YouTube. Here are my takeaways from 20 lectures with such well-known teachers as Peter Thiel (PayPal), Paul Graham (Y Combinator), and Alex Schultz (Facebook).

With the Asian market rapidly growing, almost every ambitious IT product sooner or later faces the challenge of localization for this region. And without knowing all its facets any localization project is rather doomed to fail. That’s why we at Alconost have decided to translate and share with you the article on localizing games for Asia by Plarium, a global game developer with solid experience in game localization. We found here some useful approaches that are also valid for our localization projects and hope that you’ll like the reading, too.

For Western developers, entering the Asian market is like entering outer space, only 30 megabytes heavier. Localizing games into Japanese, Chinese, and Korean requires a Herculean effort. You need to account for certain technical requirements and scrupulously research the market and the target audience’s mindset. But if this is your dream, keep reading — our experience should stand you in good stead.

Setting up the content localization and, thus, configuring the interface language of the product in such a way that the right language is rendered to the right user is extremely important for each digital platform. That’s why we have decided to translate and share with you this expert article by Nicolai Goshin from Hellicht Medien.

And we strongly hope that some strategic points would be valuable for your localization projects!

Background and preliminary considerations

Digital projects targeting audiences in different countries or different language areas are doomed to take advantage of localization strategies. So we must answer the following question: which users should be given which content in which languages? The question at the first sight seems simple. But later in this article we will point out why this topic is, in fact, complex. And, of course, we will also address how to deal with this complexity.

Let's assume a scenario in which content (for example, an online magazine) is available in three languages: German, English, and Arabic. The goal is ideally to provide content to each user in their native language. If this is not possible, the content should be provided to the user in the language that they best understand apart from their mother tongue.

This time, we're going to dive in the ups and downs of IoT development with a step-by-step tutorial. Real-life example, no theoretical "maybes", and lots of experience included. Quick references to related articles as a bonus.

About the game Streets of Rogue

In 2017 tinyBuild released Streets of Rogue, a unique visual successor to the hit game Punch Club. Streets of Rogue is remarkable for the variety of its game features and genre elements. The developers combined an intense top-down roguelike, a retro pixel art style, an atmosphere of irrepressible excitement, classic character levelling, and questing. The game revolves around playing through a series of randomly generated cities. This can be accomplished via brute force, stealth, or hacking — it’s up to you!

How and why the game needed to be localized

Streets of Rogue quickly garnered a warm reception from gamers and the press alike, so tinyBuild naturally decided to bring the game to a wider international audience.

5 options to choose from