Category: Domain Related

January 4, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 11 minutes

A new year comes around every 365 days, and gosh darn if they don’t seem to go by especially quickly for most of us. So here we are in early January yet again, and here at 4GoodHosting we imagine we’re like any reputable Canadian web hosting provider in that we hope all of you have had a good holiday season with your family and ready to get back to it – whatever your ‘it’ is. And as for being happy to see 2020 in the rear view mirror, well we imagine that goes without saying. Interesting news today that Google employees are now unionizing, definitely a first in the world of big tech. Interesting enough to dedicate some 800 or so words to it though? Not likely. What we usually do here with our blog is share more workplace and productivity relevant for people who have web hosting as means of to a bigger end. If the nature of how you make a living necessitates making use of the World Wide Web, then topics like Edge computing, the Cloud, and incoming 5G network connectivity are among different topics more likely to be of more interest to you. The way cloud computing has done away with the inflexible need for physical data storage is increasingly only part of the equation when it comes to the Cloud. Which of course is the way major sea change developments in technology tend to go. So what we’ll do here today with blog post #1 for 2021 is have a longer look at what’s being forecasted for Cloud computing for the year to come. The New Norm in Post-Pandemic World Cloud services have been essential to keeping economic and personal worlds afloat during tis time, and in particular they’ve been very integral in keeping the economy from slowing down any more than it already did. This is very likely an indicator that we’re going to be relying on cloud computing technology even more in 2021 and well beyond this year. In particular, we’re likely to see enterprise technology professionals adjusting their cloud strategies looking at both COVID-19 trends and other digital transformation initiatives. Tech vendors...

December 21, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

A lot of people who are Google devotees will want to say otherwise, but Microsoft has definitely met the bar with their Edge browser seen on most of their newest offerings. The near archaic Internet Explorer is just a blip in the rear-view mirror now, and then there’s perfectly good browsers in Safari and Firefox too. But Google Chrome is still the top dog on the block and more people choose to use it as their primary browser and that’s not likely changing anytime soon. The numbers will bend slightly one way or another, but generally it’s about 65% of all browser usage worldwide that Google Chrome accounts for. Next up is Firefox at around, and then Edge at 5% and Safari at 3.5% or so. Edge is definitely going to gain some ground here, and we can expect all sorts of study findings for 2020 coming out not too far into the new year. Here at 4GoodHosting we imagine we’re much the same as any Canadian web hosting provider right about now in that our thoughts are primarily around the holidays that are here and enjoying Christmas with our families. Each new year brings new and upcoming developments and seeing as how web browsing is something everyone is big on nowadays we thought we’d talk this week about what we can expect to be new and fresh with Chrome when it comes out with its new update releasing on January 19, 2021. Outsized Impact Because such a large majority of device users prefer Chrome it’s fair to say that Chrome's changes have an outsized impact. Google's plans get the attention of everyone from individual users and IT admins to competitors and open-source allies. We can expect this Chrome update to be similar to previous ones where the Chrome update is accompanied by enterprise-centric release notes that highlight some of the additions, deletions, enhancements and modifications that are on their way. Here’s what we know. New Permission Chip Google is setting up Chrome 88 with a new permissions request that their referring to as a ‘chip’ to make it different it from the usual pop-up prompt. This is on their...

December 14, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

We’re not flying in airborne vehicles like the Jetsons predicted we would be by 2020, but we do have robots and artificial intelligence – or A.I. as it’s abbreviated for convenience – has factored into robotic technology very heavily over the last few years. Now it’s true that no household has the equivalent of ‘Rosey’ taking care of domestic duties and whatnot, but is there reason to think we might all have our own Rosey in the not-too-distant future? Could be. We’re really no longer in the time where A.I. was in its fledgling stage. It’s definitely starting to get wings, and the premise for what’s possible with artificial intelligence is really something. Of course there’s going to be a real need for measures and protocols in place to keep it on the ‘good’ side of things, but man oh man there’s reason to be excited about all the potential here. And it’s the type of potential that is pretty enticing for anyone who works or provides services in the digital space, and that of course includes us here at 4GoodHosting along with every other Canadian web hosting provider. This kind of stuff always makes the grade with what we’ll consider newsworthy, and so we thought it would be worthwhile to point out major milestones for artificial intelligence that we’ve seen across the year that’s drawing to close now. Here are six of the main developments and emerging themes seen in artificial intelligence during 2020. Language Comprehension Take your average year and a text-generating tool likely won’t make the cut as one of the most exciting new A.I. developments. But this is 2020 (the year the Jetsons were living in if you didn’t get the cartoon reference earlier) and GPT-3 is no ordinary text-generating tool. For those in the know, it’s the follow-up for GPT-2, at the time labeled as the ‘world’s most dangerous algorithm’ with all the sensationalism you care to attach to that. GPT-3 is a cutting-edge autoregressive natural-language-processing neural network created by the research lab OpenAI. All it needs is the first few lines at the beginning of a news story to then generate impressively accurate text...

December 7, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

We imagine that for most of you the only scraping you do is part of your battle with baked-on food when doing dishes. Or maybe at the bottom of the peanut butter jar before washing it clean and recycling it. Most won’t be able to associate scraping with anything related to their desktop, but as always we like to talk about subjects that are relatable for web-savvy people with our blog. Truth told, however, those of us here at 4GoodHosting aren’t experts on any aspect of any particular part of it all outside of being a Canadian web hosting provider. Then why would anyone be ‘scraping’ the World Wide Web, especially if there’s no peanut butter to be had in the first place? Joking of course, but we imagine there’s a whole lot of people who don’t know what this would be to go along with those who are already engaged in web scraping but would be interested in how to do it better. So let’s get to it. What It Is Web scraping is a process, and it is usually automated. The aim for it is to extract large amounts of data from websites. Web scraping gather all the information/data from particular sites or specific data as per whatever requirements may be, and is usually done by companies and brands for data analysis, brand monitoring, and market research. Most commonly with an overarching goal to foster the brands’ growth and development. The problem for most is that it’s not done easily. Quite often there are IP blocking and geo-restrictions that serve as impediments to doing it. These are of course related to security, which is in-built on many websites. However, it’s true there are ways to scrape better and more effectively. The most common of these tips is using residential IP proxy for higher security, but there are other solid ones too. Popular sites will have build features that incorporate techniques and strategies to prevent developers from scraping them. IP address detection is definitely the most common of them. Many larger ones may also have IP address detection tools that prevent their website being scraped by suspicious IP addresses....

December 1, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

1991 sure was a long time ago, and yet it was at a certain point nearly 30 years ago now that there was quite literally one – and only one – person on the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee certainly isn’t a household name the way many other technology founders are, but perhaps he should be. If you don’t know of him and can’t see where we are going with this, he’s the man who created the Internet. A pivotal moment in human history for sure, and especially noteworthy seeing as how his creation has turned out to be an immeasurable blessing for global connectivity and productivity. On the other side, however, it’s done great harm to many people too so maybe it’s the proverbial ‘double-edged sword’ in that regard. I know I’m sure as shoot glad the Internet didn’t exist when I was a teenager. That said, the significance of what Internet connectivity offers in the way of instant and wide-reaching access to information certainly isn’t lost on us here at 4GoodHosting. Like any good Canadian web hosting provider, the sheer volume of customers we provide with hosting for their sites indicates that people are immensely receptive to what being online can do for their businesses, ventures, or personal interests / avocational pursuits. More and more people are looking for reliable web hosting in Canada every day, and that’s going to be the same for any country in the world really. Which is the ideal segue into the news we’ll share as our topic this week – not surprisingly, the Internet continues to be increasingly populated! Big Jump The last quarter of this current year saw 370.7 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs). That’s an increase of 0.6 million domain name registrations as compared to the second quarter of the year. All this according to VeriSign, who’s a global provider of domain name registry services and Internet infrastructure. Want an understanding of just how much of a priority people are putting onto going online? Look no further than the fact that domain name registrations have grown by 10.8 million, or 3.0 percent, year over year. No...

November 23, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Many of you who work at a desktop in an office will probably have been in a situation where the lights flicker, and your co-workers then quickly urge everyone in the vicinity to ‘save’. It’s nice if you could know in advance of power outage coming, and sometimes you do get little warnings like these ones. But if you don’t and you’ve done a bunch of work without saving any time recently, well that’s going to be a problem. Or at least it’s a problem for now, as there’s a new type of computer chip that’s been developed that has the potential to save you from the frustration of having to do work over or anything of the sort. This is something that most of us can relate to if you spend the majority of your day working in front of a screen, and of course here at 4GoodHosting we’re like that in the same way that most Canadian web hosting providers would be too. Truth is the new technological advances in computing are coming fast and furious these days, and that’s a darn good thing. Spintronic devices are appealing alternatives to conventional computer chips, providing digital information storage that is extremely energy efficient plus relatively easy to manufacture on a large scale. The only current drawback for these devices, which depend on magnetic memory, is that they’re impeded by their relatively slow speeds in comparison to conventional electronic chips. Superior Speeds Magnetization switching is the term used for writing information into magnetic memory, and that’s what happens when data is saved to computer chips. What’s happened now is that there is a new technique for it where the speeds are nearly 100 times faster than state-of-the-art spintronic devices. This creates the potential for ultrafast magnetic memory in computer chips, and so fast in fact that data would be retained even if there was no power. This is achieved using very short, 6-picosecond electrical pulses to switch the magnetization of a thin film in a magnetic device. And the key is that being done with great energy efficiency. A picosecond is one-trillionth of a second. Whereas with conventional computer chips,...

November 16, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

There’s been a whole lot of hubbub about the iPhone 12 and other new smartphone offerings from the big manufacturers, but there’s no other factor that’s playing into all the hype quite like 5G network connectivity. If you’re the type to be reading this then you’re also probably one who’s had plenty of news and info thrust upon you regarding the coming of 5G, and in truth there is a lot to be enthused about. You can look at that from the individual perspective, but if you ask us the real promise here is in the collective benefit and what this means for the IoT and things like advanced remote healthcare and the like. It’s going to be fairly revolutionary and that’s likely not an exaggeration. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other Canadian web hosting provider in that we know it’s likely going to have big time ramifications for how we do things in the long term too, and as you’ve likely seen it’s a topic we seemingly can’t get enough of. There’s been a lot made of how 5G infrastructure is going to go in Canada, and how the widespread consensus is that Huawei can’t be allowed to be a part of that. But let’s leave any all references to national security out of this and instead focus on what’s the current status of 5G in Canada. For starters, there’s no ‘ultra wideband’ in Canada. What’s happened here is carriers in Canada have installed 5G on channels that previously were intended for 4G. Rogers channels are very similar to T-Mobile's ‘nationwide’ and mid-band 5G down south, but as of now Bell and Telus are using a 5G channel very similar to a popular 4G band. The long and short of it is that Bell, Telus, and Rogers all view 5G as an add-on to 4G now, so that means even if you’re using a 5G enabled smartphone you’re probably still going to be connected with 4G. The good news response to that is that the 5G experience should get broader and somewhat better over the next year as the carriers extend coverage beyond their current limited areas. Think...

November 9, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Many people will immediately attribute a noticeable slowdown with their computer to an aging and failing hard drive, but that’s not always the case. Even desktops and notebooks that aren’t particularly old can start to have performance shortcomings, and it’s not like most of us have the means to simply replace our devices every time this occurs. Adding to this issue is the fact that modern life is demanding that we demand more for those devices too, and this makes it so that our personal and work computers are often overloaded in ways. This trend isn’t lost on anyone we imagine, and here at 4GoodHosting one of the things we’re very aware of as a Canadian web hosting provider is that anyone who has a website is going to be wary of a high bounce rate. If you don’t know what that is, it’s the rate at which visitors to your site leave within a certain time period of their arrival. Would-be visitors to your site who perceive some sort of problem with it opening and displaying may put that on you, when in fact it has much more to do with the shortcoming of their browser device of-choice. The good news is that there are ways to optimize CPI usage and performance, and a good many of them aren’t going to ask much in the way of your time, effort, or expense. So let’s have a look at those with our blog post for this week. All About Throughput The way it works for most applications is that performance is centered around throughput. The definition for that term is how much work the server can process in a certain timeframe. Nowadays most high-end servers on the market are designed with throughput in mind. Finding just one server that’s ideally optimized for running all types of workloads out-of-the-box hasn’t happened yet, however. So getting the most out of your server’s available resources is best done by the CPU’s physical limitations relative to your performance requirements. Understanding that all CPU optimization efforts are essentially software-based is a good place to start. So rather than upgrading hardware, it’s better to focus on...

November 2, 2020

Domain Related

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Some people will say you can never be too frugal or thrifty, and in honesty even if you can afford to spend more there’s really no good reason you should if there’s an alternative. This is something a lot of people can relate to. If you’re the webmaster or similarly titled individual who’s at the helm of a company or organization and needing to find savings in your web operations then the Google Cloud Free Tier offers just that if you are taking advantage of what cloud storage offers these days. The appeal of cloud storage of course needs no explanation. Physical storage is just that – physical – and that’s means space demands and as we become increasingly more digital in lives and business every day it’s more and more impractical to be housing data in physical data centers. Cloud storage has been a godsend in this regard, and we’re very fortunate to have it now. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like every other Canadian web hosting provider in that our data centers are usually working at near capacity, and we also take very opportunity to utilize cloud storage for internal storage needs related to our business and day-to-day operations. Google has had its Free Tier for Google Cloud for a while now, and while it’s great for the individual or smaller-scale operations there’s just not enough capacity of the likes of us. For the average individual or smaller business, however, it’s a great resource to have at your disposal. Successful businesses grow, and you wouldn’t want it any other way. But that may mean stretching your storage needs beyond what the Google Cloud Free Tier maximum. But it also many not, and particularly if you find ways to maximize your use of the Google Cloud Free Tier. Here’s how you can do that. Store Only What’s Needed Free databases included like Firestore and Cloud Storage are completely flexible tools that let you nest away key-value documents and objects respectively. Google Cloud’s always-free tier allows no-cost storage of your first 1GB (Firestore) and 10GB (Cloud Storage). For apps that keep more details, however, it’s common to go through those free...