Category Archives: Domain Related

Internet privacy is one of the hottest of the hot button issues in the digital world these days, and it has been for quite some time. There’s so many different ones that are still discusses at length, and for good reason. News over recent years has indicated the surprising extent to which people’s private and other information has been exposed. There are ongoing efforts to counter this trend, but as is the case with many things it takes time to put effective measures in place.

Browser fingerprinting is one of them, and when one digs deeper into this particular issue it’s fairly common to have greater concerns about it. Here at 4GoodHosting, we are one of the many reputable Canadian web hosting providers who see the ‘insecurity’ of the World Wide Web to be as big a problem as it really is. As such we choose to make people informed of what they can do to protect themselves against the prying eyes that they likely have no idea are watching their moves online.

So what’s at issue here, how concerned should you be, and what can people do to be proactive in defending themselves against browser fingerprinting. Let’s look at all of this today.

Pervasive Peeping

A good number of people who use VPN services to hide their IP address and location may believe that by doing so they don’t have to worry about their browsing privacy being violated. This is the best place for us to start here, because that’s simply not true. With browser fingerprinting you can be identified and tracked.

One thing there’s no getting around is that every time you go online, your browsing device then provides highly specific information about your operating system, settings, and even hardware, to the site you’re visiting. This in itself is perfectly normal, and ideally shouldn’t be any cause for concern.

However, when this information is used to identify and track you online then you’ve experienced browser fingerprinting, and unfortunately many unique details and preferences can be exposed through your browser.

Once a sufficient amount of information has been collected, you are now regarded as having a ‘fingerprint’ for tracking and information purposes.

The sum total of these outputs can be used to render a unique “fingerprint” for tracking and identification purposes. What’s revealed as part of your fingerprint? Good question, and it’s quite a list:

• User agent header
• Accept header
• Connection header
• Encoding header
• Language header
• Plugins list
• Platform
• Cookie preferences (allowed or not)
• Do-Not-Track preferences (yes, no, or not communicated)
• User’s time zone
• Screen resolution and its color depth
• Local storage use specs
• Session storage use specs
• Picture rendered with the HTML Canvas element
• Picture rendered with WebGL
• Identifying and listing of any AdBlock software
• List of fonts

Extent of Browser Fingerprinting Accuracy

Browser fingerprinting may be a tool to identify and track people as they browse the web, but it’s certainly not the first of them and it likely won’t be the last. There has been all sorts of talk in the news that there are many different entities – ranging from corporate and government ones – that have an interest in monitoring internet browsing tendencies and haven’t been reserved in the slightest about acting on it.

The most conspicuous ones are advertisers and marketers who find this technique useful for acquiring more detailed data on users, with increased advertising revenue being what’s at stake. Alternately, some websites use browser fingerprinting to indicate potential fraud, so it’s true that not every variation of browser fingerprinting is ill-conceived

Test Websites for Browser Fingerprinting

It’s fair to say, however, that you should be doing what you can to prevent your from being yet another information mine for those employing browser fingerprinting. Fortunately, there are some online resources you can use to determine the information that is being revealed by your browser.

The best one in our opinion is www.deviceinfo.me.

In addition, you may also want to try websites that make browser data known and also assess a ‘uniqueness’ score calculated via your variables in comparison to their database of browsers.

Panopticlick is a good one we’ve been introduced to, and amiunique.org is said to also be a good resource. Amiunique, however, is open source and provides more information and updated fingerprinting techniques, including webGL and canvas.

The question will of course be how accurate are these sites. The answer is that, for the most part, they’re only somewhat accurate. Go ahead and make use of them, but don’t take their findings to be absolute truths and a thorough representation of what may be made available through your browser.

Without going into extensive detail, browser fingerprinting test websites like the ones shared above are good for revealing the unique information and values that can be rendered from your browser. Beyond that, however, trying to beat the test by achieving a low ‘uniqueness’ score may be a waste of time by and large.

Mitigating your Browser Fingerprint

Browser fingerprinting is a very complex and evolving issue. One interesting more recent revelation is that there’s nothing you can do to mitigate some fingerprinting attacks on smartphones. That said, here are ways to mitigate your browser fingerprint:

1. Modifications and Tweaks to the Browser

Sometimes there are different options for tweaks and modifications to mitigate browser fingerprinting. For Firefox, you can get started with this by typing about:config into the URL bar of your browser, hit enter, agree to “accept the risk” and make the following changes:

• resistFingerprinting (change to true)
• disabled (change to true)
• peerconnection.enabled (change to false)
• enabled (change to false)
• firstparty.isolate (change to true)

We will mention as well Brave browser is a good option for those wanting a simple, privacy-focused browser that blocks tracking by default and still supports Chrome extensions. Brave also allows you to enable fingerprinting protection, which is under the Brave Shields settings:

2. Browser Extensions and Add-ons

There are a number of different browser extensions and add-ons that you may find useful. Here are some of them:

• Canvasblocker by kkapsner
• Trace by AbsoluteDouble
• Chameleon by sereneblue

3. Use of Virtual Machines

Another option is to run different virtual machines, making it so that you’re able to run different operating systems on your host computer. VirtualBox is FOSS and offers an easy way to run different Linux VMs for more privacy and security. There are many different video tutorials online, depending on your operating system and the VM OS you are looking to use.

Virtual machines offer numerous advantages in terms of privacy and security, while also protecting your host machine. If the VM iscompromised, simply delete it and create a new one. Plus, different VMs can be used for different purposes.

4. Avoid Browsing with a Smartphone

The reality is that every ‘smart’ device is a data collection tool for corporate entities (and their surveillance partners), and smartphones are especially vulnerable to browser fingerprinting. Most often they’re fingerprinted using internal sensors and there’s not much that can be done to prevent that. Attacks can be launched by any website you visit or any app you use on a vulnerable device without requiring any explicit confirmation or consent from you, and a fingerprint is usually generated in less than one second. Plus, the calibration fingerprint never changes, even after a factory reset.

It should be noted that Apple has apparently patched this attack vector with iOS 12.2, while Google and Android still have yet to take any action on it

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It may be the name of a particularly scenic island off the Southern California coast, but Catalina is now also the name of the newest Mac OS that has recently arrived. Like any successful company they’re not ones to rest on their laurels at Apple, and as such these new and improved operating systems keep on coming. For most Mac owners that’s a good thing, and there’s a LOT of R&D efforts and budget directed towards determining what new wrinkles users will find most appealing.

Here at 4GoodHosting, we imagine that nearly every other quality Canadian web hosting provider is also going to be taking note of the new features seen with Mac OS Catalina. Considering that Macs are the computers of choice for people who employ their devices for creative purposes, we can go ahead and assume these development will appeal to enough of our customers that they’re definitely worthy of a blog post.

So let’s do that here today – have a look at the Top 5 New Features with Mac OS Catalina.

With its release, the new MacOS brings with it a laundry list of changes, including a host of new features, a few updated apps, and the demise of a beloved app. But among these features, five really stand out from the rest. Here are the five best features in MacOS Catalina.

1. Apple Music, Podcasts, and TV – Replacing iTunes

To be certain, there are a LOT of people who are none to pleased to have heard of iTunes’ coming demise. Whether or not that’s going to be problematic for you, the general consensus is that over time these users will also come to appreciate the appeal of what’s being introduced here with Catalina as it regards entertainment via the devices.

Beginning with Catalina, iTunes is will be replaced with Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Podcasts apps. And, in our opinion, if you’re open to new things you’ll quickly come to see how this is all a good thing.

The general consensus is that the Apple Music app is lightning fast and will provide users with a library of some 50 million songs, playlists, and music videos. Plus, Apple Music users will still have access to the iTunes music store. The Apple TV app will support 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos, and the over 100,000 iTunes movies and TV shows now available for rent or purchase is something that promises to go over VERY well with Mac Users who love entertainment on-demand.

Apple TV+ is their new original video subscription service, and podcast fans will love how the new Apple Podcasts app includes a catalog of over 700,000 shows. Go ahead and search for podcast episodes by host or discussion topic and you’ll like how machine learning gets you to your podcast of-choice that much more quickly.

2. 2^ND Screen support with new Sidecar App for iPads

Equally worth of the most fanfare here is MacOS Catalina’s second screen support for iPads – Sidecar. This new feature allows Mac users to utilize their iPads as a second screen with their Macs for any task where two displays are preferable. Sidecar can be incorporated in two different ways; dragging windows from your Mac to your iPad and using the pad just as you would any external monitor, or pairing your iPad with Apple Pencil to make file changes that are then reflected on the primary display seen on your Mac.

It will be possible for you to use Sidecar wired or wirelessly. Do note, though, that for the wireless version to work you must be within ten metres of your Mac. There is also support for Touch Bar provided the apps you’re using with Sidecar actually support Touch Bar.

Sidecar promises to be very popular with people who write extensively with their Mac and would prefer not to have to be referencing on the same display. Of course, there will be many other appeal points for it too. Which leads us to number 3 here..

3. 3. Using Sidecar to Use iPad as a Drawing Tablet

Another sure-to-appeal aspect of Sidecar will have a lot of promise for artists, designers, and illustrators. Once you connect your iPad with Sidecar, you can take your Apple Pencil and draw and annotate things directly on that iPad.

Needless to say, many people will be abandoning their Wacom tablets and enjoying the direct-source productivity made possible by Catalina OS and Sidecar in this way. The ability to directly edit creations with Photoshop or Illustrator without having to import a file to the device is something that’s definitely going to be well received.

4. Screen Time

Here’s the one new feature with Catalina that is bound to be getting top marks from parents. Managing the family’s screen time is made a lot easier now that the Screen Time app has become standard with a new MacOS. Catalina’s Screen Time lets users set limits for app accessibility and time usage across all of your Apple devices – not just your Mac.

Screen Time will also generate usage reports, and it also boasts a ‘ One More Minute’ feature that provides users with a small amount of extra time to wrap things up if that’ what they need. It also allows users to set communication limits whereby you can control who is able to communicate with your kids, and when they can do that.

5. Updated and Improved Photos App

Apple has done well with the way they have revamped the Photos app in their newest operating system, Catalina. The most notable change is the way that it curates and features your best photos for you, doing so while removing poor-quality photos and duplicate shots at the same time without you having to do that manually on your own.

The Photos app also now generates much larger previews for photos, and machine learning helps your OS to be ‘smart’ about highlight important moments and memories. In addition, Live Photos and videos can now be auto-played while users scroll through their photo library.

We’ll conclude today by saying we’re aware we did this same type of commendation for Mojave OS not so long ago, but perhaps the fact that we’re doing it again (and will be in the future too likely) suggests that they do what they do exceptionally well down there in Mountain View, CA.

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Bandwidth is a term that’s bandied about fairly regularly in the digital world these days, and not surprisingly given how not enough of it can mean the ‘lag’ that nearly everyone has major difficulty tolerating. Truth is a lot of people that might be decrying a lack of it may not actually know what it is, and are more simply regurgitating what they’ve heard others says when voicing similar complaints.

Sufficient bandwidth is an absolute necessity for providing reliable web hosting, and here at 4GoodHosting we’re the same as every quality web hosting provider in Canada in that the success of our business depends on having it to the extent that it’s needed for websites hosted with 4GH. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but what is worth mentioning is that – in addition to having a basic understanding of web hosting bandwidth – there are measures that webmasters can implement themselves to increase available bandwidth.

All of that to come here in today’s blog entry, but first let’s have a basic look at what exactly web hosting bandwidth is and why you certainly can’t do without it

What is Web Hosting Bandwidth

Nearly all of you will be familiar with what it’s like to be driving in rush-hour traffic, or even observing it from a distance. We can think of bandwidth like the lanes of a highway and each vehicle represents the web traffic moving towards your site. Too many of them on those roads leads to long delays and frustrated drivers, while at the opposite end too many lanes mean excessive infrastructure costs for the city and a network that’s difficult and expensive to maintain on the taxpayer dime.

To the point, web hosting bandwidth is the amount of data that a website can deliver to its visitors over a certain period of time. We can conceptualize bandwidth as the capacity or diameter of any one or more of the ‘tubes’ of the internet – high bandwidths mean stronger, larger connections that can deliver more traffic and data, while low bandwidths mean more restricted connections or networks that often result in backlogs and slower loading speeds.

Web hosting providers (like us) typically describe the bandwidth associated with a certain hosting plan by relaying it as how much data can be delivered in a specific period of time, and most commonly in terms of gigabytes or terabytes per-month. As to be expected, you’ll pay more for extra bandwidth, but it’s also pretty much the norm that if you need it it’s not an added expense you can realistically avoid.

Unless backlogs and slower loading speeds aren’t going to be problematic for your visitors.. right then.

How Much Bandwidth Will Do?

This of course depends on the size, structure, and nature of your website. The reality is that bandwidth is a less adjustable component of web hosting, and so it’s important to find a web hosting plan in Canada with just the right amount of it as you certainly don’t want to be paying for a higher-priced hosting package that is more than you need.

It might be appropriate to say it’s better to err on the side of caution here and that too much is better than too little. While that’s probably true, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t or can’t find a package that gives you exactly the amount of bandwidth you need.

The Formula

We certainly didn’t create it, but we’re happy to share this simple formula for calculating how much bandwidth your site consumes; take these factors:

• Average number of visitors each day
• Average size of a page on your website, in kilobytes
• Average number of pages viewed by each visitor
• 31 days in a month

And multiply them all together.

That number will be the amount of bandwidth you can expect to approximately consume each month, in kilobytes (divide by 1,000,000 to calculate gigabytes). If your intention is to have people downloading files from your site, you’ll also want to multiply the average daily number of downloads and the average file size and add that number to your total.

It’s also a good idea to multiply your bandwidth estimate by roughly 1.5 to give yourself some flexibility with these projections.

Unlimited Bandwidth?

Not surprisingly, global internet traffic is reported to be increasing by roughly 22% each year. This growth is far outpacing the ability of telecommunications and internet service providers to supply the amounts of bandwidth required for many sites to retain their status quo when it comes to website performance. In response we’re seeing increased numbers of packages coming advertised as offering unlimited bandwidth.

That’s going to be misleading like that, as it’s not really unlimited. A better term here would be unmetered. Generally speaking, it’s only unlimited if every site hosted in that shared hosting arrangement is operating within their established bounds. We won’t go any longer, but just be wary of any such offer for unlimited bandwidth.

What Makes Bandwidth Important for a Website?

We can create an analogy here between bandwidth and a pair of shoes. Even Usain Bolt won’t be streaking down the track effectively if his cleats are several sizes too small. But in more literal performance terms, bandwidth is instrumental to your site’s speed and overall performance. You want it to be ‘firing on all cylinders’ as the expression goes, and having enough bandwidth is absolutely essential if your site is to be doing that.

First and foremost with all of this is page load speed. Web browsing individuals are impatient, so enough said about that. Insufficient bandwidth = poor page load speeds. Dynamic content needs more bandwidth too, and it’s a big part of why VPS hosting is increasingly popular these days

Is it Possible to Increase Bandwidth?

It is, and the primary way to do so is by conserving it. What we mean by this is reducing your site’s bandwidth usage. Here’s the most common ways of increasing available bandwidth for a website:

• Look for external sources or storage for images and videos (or optimize image files for web)
• Enable compression for HTTP, CSS, and JavaScript
• Implement caching and a content delivery network to store static content on servers closest to your audience
• Outsource RSS feeds to third-party applications or plugins

Alternately, you can – as mentioned – consider moving to a VPS hosting package.

Most well-made and well-situated websites backed by solid web hosting can expect to see 10% to 20% more traffic each month. Given this likelihood, even those of you are absolutely content with the amount of bandwidth available to you may find yourself needing more of it in the not too distant future.

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There’s a whole spectrum of people who have to have at least some level of familiarity with search engine optimization. Those that have SEO anywhere in their job title are a given, but there’s a number of other people who need to be catering to SEO realities with their work. Those of us who create content are a good example, but there’s others too.

Even if you’re an absolute lay person when it comes to this stuff, you’ve probably heard how Google and other search engine powerhouses prevent people from becoming complacent with all this by constantly changing the algorithms that determine the value of SEO.

Here at 4GoodHosting, as a top Canadian web hosting provider this stuff is very much front and centre for us nearly all the time. We know it has some serious importance for a good number of you too. Page rankings are serious stuff if you need to have your business as visible as possible online, and as such many people make an effort to really stay on top of best SEO practices.

Now we don’t claim to be the best of experts, but here are 3 guaranteed effective SEO enhancing moves you can make to help your website climb to higher spots in SERPS (search engine result pages)

Move 1: Publish Better Long-Form Content More Frequently

You’ve probably already heard the expression ‘content is king’, and likely more than a few times too. Fact is it’s as true as can be. Google rewards quality long-form content provided it is written in ways which benefits the users of the site. To ensure this, you need to review your service pages and give them priority. With a top-to-bottom, most important to least approach. you can identify spots where you can add informative sections of FAQ to expand the value of upon page.

Why FAQs though, you may be asking. They are an excellent means of naturally working in keywords – and especially for FAQ questions that you can foresee being made with voice searches more frequently.

Testimonials are another useful resource for this that many people won’t be aware of, and working with the same principles. Search engines increasingly regard the highest-quality content to be that which is useful for the visitors of the site, and they also have more and more of the AI to accurately identify this type of content.

Longer more-detail and ^useful^ blog posts are good too, and it may be that one longer and more developed post once a month may be better than 3-4 shorter pieces published during that same time frame. Another option is to include the posts of long-form along with short ones that you’ve written to create long-form posts that go once or twice a month.

Other tips? Quotes from the experts, with relevant images that are ideally original and also about the how-to videos with some of the additional resources for the readers are known to be effective SEO boosters as well.

Move 2: Beneficial Link Building

Link building is well understood and a widely-embraced component of content marketing. The key is in creating linkable content assets and then knowing how to market them to the types of people who will find it informative and valuable enough that they consider sharing it.

The general rule of thumb for content marketing has been that you should direct half of your resources to developing content, and the other half goes towards marketing those assets. The smart shift for SEO today is to tilt that in favor of creating strategic content, and even to as much as a 70/30, or 80/20 extent.

Start by analyzing to what extent you have developed relationships with those you consider to be reliable sources of backlinking. If you’re fairly well established in that regard then you might be able to spend about 80 percent of the content marketing and link building time for creating linkable content assets.

If not, you then need to alter the ratio to spend more time working towards marketing your link assets more effectively.

Move 3: Earning Quality Online Reviews Consistently

For a good long time it’s been the case that doing what it took to receive a regular supply of Google Reviews was all the thought you needed to give to getting quality online reviews for your business. Nowadays, however, it’s just not enough because – as mentioned – Google is now just that much more developed and sophisticated when it comes to analyzing the real values out there in the digital world; they have means of determining that which indicates that customers genuinely appreciate companies.

No real ‘trick’ of any sort to relate here – good old fashioned ‘quality products and / or services and putting the customer first’ sort of stuff that’s very necessary for ensuring your business is review favourably online nearly all the time.

It is also now understood that Google will reward sites with reviews that are much more diverse than Google and Yelp.

Get Help if You Need It

It’s likely quite fair to say that well more than half of the people who’ll say they know SEO ‘enough’ really don’t and are likely putting their web presence and online identity at a disadvantage because of it. It’s perfectly fine to admit this, and we’re happy to help any of our customers who are finding their website isn’t where it needs to be as it relates to ranking for keywords.

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With the fact that they barely blinked then slapped with a $5M dollar fine recently with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it’s a reminder that Facebook is as deep-pocketed as one can be. Not surprising that the world’s social media mega giant is so wealthy, and as such we can also assume that they have the bucks needed to get into whatever venture they choose to. The fact that they’re doing so in cryptocurrency is one, however, where they sheer magnitude of what this could mean within the world of online e-commerce.

Here at 4GoodHosting, being a quality Canadian web hosting provider put us in a more natural position than most to be attuned to these kinds of developments and what they can mean for the ‘general public’ of the 21st century digital world. We’ve talked about Blockchain here in our blog before, and it’s on this game-changing piece of fintech (financial technology) that this – and all types of cryptocurrency – are based on.

This kind of industry disruption is one of the more defining aspects of the digital world these days, and the ‘disruption’ that could come from this is really one to talk about. No doubt the banking world won’t be particularly enthusiastic about it.

So what’s this all about?

New Way to Pay

Facebook’s digital currency-to be will be called Libra, and the ‘crypto wallet’ you’ll use to carry it is called Calibra. What you’ll do is download the Calibra digital wallet application, purchase the Libra digital currency through a financial network, and then exchange payments with peer-to-peer digital money transfers through Calibra standing alone as an app. It’s reported that users will also be able to do the same thing through Facebook’s subsidiaries WhatsApp and Messenger.

The Libra platform is expected to launch sometime next year, in 2020, and it’s being promoted as a cryptocurrency app that will let Facebook users send, add or withdraw money as weill as allowing someone to fill their wallet, cash out or split a restaurant tab all using Messenger. Further, you may eventually be able to pay bills, buy a cup of coffee with the scan of a code, or taking transit without needing to have cash or a metro pass in your pocket.

For exchange rates between fiat currency and Libra, Calibra will show them as well as what it will charge to convert it back again. The key is that blockchain is serving to cut out the middleman, in this case a central bank or clearing house. With that goes the majority of costs associated with these types of financial transactions.

Facebook is promising that their transaction fees will be low-cost and transparent, and particularly so if you’re sending money internationally. By cutting fees made possible by utilizing blockchain, Calibra promises to leave more money at your digital disposal.

Powerful and Safe

The blockchain transactional network on which Calibra will exist will be able to handle thousands of transactions every second, and data on those financial transactions will be kept separate from data about the social network. This assurance will of course be very important to users. Calibra will not share account information or financial data with Facebook or any third party without customer consent, meaning account information will not be used for customers’ account information. Nor will financial data be used to improve ad targeting on the Facebook family of products.

Libra is reported to be different from other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, in that it is backed by fiat currency. This means its value is not simply determined by supply and demand like the others. It’s also going to be designed so that it will be interoperable with other cryptocurrency wallets because they’ll run on top of the same blockchain network.

Facebook will secure financial transactions made through its digital wallet app in a number of different ways; for starters, they will not be in charge of governing the blockchain network. Instead, that will be handled by the Libra Association, which is made up of dozens of other companies – Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Uber among them. Additionally, all accounts and transactions are verified and fraud prevention is built in to the app. Accounts are verified with government-issued IDs, such as a driver’s license, so users can be certain other users are who they say they are.

Calibra will also have an in-app reporting function and dedicated customer service.

Facebook’s Libra Project appears to be a hybrid blockchain one that is a mix of permission and public ones. What this means is that it connect to banks to verify and onboard users (permission) and then uses a public blockchain to enable the users to transfer or spend funds.

Where’s the Profit?

Long story short, there’s huge potential for Facebook here to generate via ad revenue, with the understanding that there will be more conversion of consumers who view ads. It should also be a more attractive e-commerce marketplace that gains sellers and buyers in growing economies where access to e-money services for transactions may be limited.

A stat that speaks to that – almost half of all adults globally don’t have an active bank account. These numbers are worse in developing countries, and even worse for women.

All of this is very much in its early stages, but make no mistake about it – Social media’s colossus is going to be one of the ‘early birds’ getting the worm when it comes to cryptocurrency.

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There’s a whole lot in the news these days about the perils of too much time spent on social media, and particularly so for young people. As is the case with everything, moderation is the key and it’s only when you overdo it that the situation becomes harmful. Like it or not, social media has become an all-pervasive aspect of our lives for many of us, and we’re not hesitant about indulging in it in the slightest. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat may have a new kid on the block soon, and he’s the protégé of one of the biggest players in the Internet world – Google.

Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like any other leading Canadian web hosting provider in that we can’t help but see and hear firsthand about just how omnipresent social media is in the lives of people. This news regarding Google’s entry in the world of SM is noteworthy because it’s very much a situation where the company’s deep pockets will ensure that if it’s not a success off the hop, it will be eventually after however many tries are necessary.

So what’s there to know about this new Shoelace, and what can those interested in it expect if they decide to give it a whirl. Let’s have a look at that here today.

The Skinny on Shoelace

Admittedly, Google has never had any success developing a social network, but they’ve definitely persevered with the effort. Following the shutdown of platforms like Orkut, Google Buzz, and Google+ Google has decided the time is right to test out yet another social network, an as mentioned this one’s called Shoelace.

Google’s experimental Area 120 product development workshop has been behind the building of it, and Shoelace is a hyper-local social networking app (for Android and iOS) that takes a different approach – it aims to connect people based on shared interests in specific events and in-person activities. Advocates of it have suggested that Shoelace promises to be a social network that encourages people to spend less time on their phones, and more of it engaging in real-life activities with like-minded people NEAR you.

All About the ‘Loops’

This is where Shoelace’s name comes from – users will be able to create their own ‘loop’ which will essentially be listings for events that can be shared with others on the app, and with a secondary focus of possibly promoting the making of a new friend or two along the way.

If, however, you don’t have any of your own events to suggest, it’s possible to designate your interest in a variety of categories with Shoelace. It will then use that info to recommend a number of ‘hand-picked’ activities the app believes you might have an interest in. The idea of course being that as you participate and engage in greater numbers of activities, you develop a social network of people who have the same interests and the same participation tendencies.

Crews Too

Users will also be able to create profiles that allow sharing tidbits about themselves, learning about others in their ‘crews,’ and making it easier to organize and be prepared for upcoming events. Part of Shoelace’s listing on the Google Play Store states that the most recent update to the app added the ability to share Loops using a hyperlink, and the belief is that once people get the hang of that it could make it even easier to get the word out about upcoming activities.

As of Now, Big Apple Only

Keeping in mind that it’s still a prototype, the current situation is that Shoelace is only available in New York City. Google has said its goal is to bring Shoelace to cities across the U.S. in the future, and it’s also true that they’re even taking requests for suggestions as to which places it should bring Shoelace to next.

In addition, access to Shoelace is invite-only for now.

Whether or not Shoelace truly takes off remains to be seen, but it deserves some credit if for no other reason then the fact it looks to be a social network that’s promoting a social life that’s not contained within the device pretty much exclusively. It’s a nice conceptual departure in that regard, and many insiders think that if it does take root then we’ll likely see many of its features and ideas incorporated into Google Maps or other Google services before too long.

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