Arabic URLs, DTES dreams
Document Tools
After 40 years, the so-called Worldwide Web is about to become truly international: the regulating body Icann will now allow web addresses in non-Latin characters such as Mandarin, Arabic, Hindu or Russian Cyrillic script. SFU Business professor Dianne Cyr has spent the last seven years researching how businesses can localize web sites to respect cultural sensitivities across the globe. She says this change won't necessarily make the web more accessible and may, in fact, "be problematic. It's tough when you start making changes to a standardized system and could affect businesses in a negative way. For example, not all computers are set up to accommodate Chinese or Arabic characters."
Dianne Cyr, (c)
604.454.8581, 604.886.4667, cyr@sfu.ca
Downtown Eastside solutions
SFU criminologist Neil Boyd has co-authored a new book on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that offers provocative solutions to the challenges facing all major North American cities and not just Canada’s poorest area code. In A Thousand Dreams: Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the Fight for Its Future, Boyd and co-authors Larry Campbell, Vancouver’s former mayor and chief coroner, and investigative journalist Lori Culbert advocate far-reaching changes to address homelessness and drug addiction. Boyd can elaborate on the changes, which include decriminalizing prostitution, treating illegal drug use as a public-health problem and adopting a national housing strategy for the mentally ill and addicted.
Neil Boyd, 778.782.3324, 604.947.9569, nboyd@sfu.ca