The World Wide Web (WWW) is one of the greatest inventions of mankind. It allows for dynamic documents and apps that all link to each other. For instance, I can easily write a blog about the WWW and easily point you to more information about it. However, many forget the “world wide” aspect of the web. People often don’t consider people in other countries who might visit their site. For instance, JimmyNet only got 67.7% of it’s visitors from the United States this year (ignoring VPNs and such). This means that over 30% of visitors might not be familiar with common U.S. standards. Because of this, I plan to bring JimmyNet into compliance with international standards.
Weights and Measures
From now on, JimmyNet will use the International System of Units (commonly known as the metric system or SI) as the primary system of weights and measures. This means I will use meters, liters, gram, and degrees Celsius for almost all measurements. I might also list U.S. measures, but I don’t really like using them. (For U.S. readers, please try to use the metric system whenever you can in daily life).
Paper Size
Going forward JimmyNet will primarily use international standard paper sizes. While most pages on JimmyNet are dynamic, documents such as PDFs will use A4 size. Not only is the A series of paper sizes the international standard, it is also mathematically easier to work with. If you use U.S. letter paper, this may make prints slightly smaller. Sorry about that.
Numbers
There are many ways to write numbers. Some counties use a decimal point, whereas other use a comma. In the U.S. most people write numbers like this: 121,323,434.23. This is not suitable for a website that is read internationally. Going forward I will default to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures’ method for writing out numbers. JimmyNet will use a “.” as a decimal point, and group digits in groups of three separated by a space. Below are some examples.
10
5.2
1 000
1 000 000
3 232 544.23Conclusion
It is my hope that by using international standards, JimmyNet will be able to reach a larger audience. These changes should aka JimmyNet readable by anyone who speaks English. (I would like to translate JimmyNet, but I don’t have the time). I realize this may be confusing to my fellow Americans who read JimmyNet, but its not my fault everyone in this country does everything weirdly. I have personally converted most things in my life to the metric system and I encourage all Americans to do the same.
| Old Units | New Units |
| inches, feet yards, miles | millimeters, centimeters, meter, kilometers |
| degrees Fahrenheit | degrees Celsius |
| pounds | kilograms |
| gallons | liters |
| Old Numbers | New Numbers |
| 1,000.54543 | 1 352 000.345 343 434 |
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