June 5, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Anyone who’s a keener with the all the workings of the digital world will be familiar with the acronym IoT and the fact it stands for the Internet of Things. We’ll go ahead and assume you’re one of them if you’re a regular here and reading our blog entries with any degree of regularity. It never takes long for major technological infrastructure developments to branch off into subsets of the original, and that’s exactly with the newfound EoT - Economy of Things – and the way this new level of interconnectivity is set to revolutionize the online business world is quite something. Much of what makes this practical and appealing at the same time is that people will always want to have straightest distance between two points available to them when it comes to completing transactions for services / goods obtained. The IoT certainly has much more of a relation to services than goods, but when you think about all of the services we take advantage of on a regular basis it makes sense that implementing web-based tech to simplify transaction processes is going to be to most people’s liking. And this makes sense to us here at 4GoodHosting in the way it would for any good Canadian web hosting provider too. We are likely to see a lot of inroads made in between the EoT and SaaS and PaaS services / products as well, and we are certainly just seeing the tip of the iceberg with where this is going to go and how far-reaching this is going to be. So we’re going to look at how much inter-device trading is expected over the course of the remainder of this decade here with this blog entry. Intersections for Data and Money The expectation is that by the end of the 2020s, around 3.3 billion Internet-connected devices (IoT devices) will be taking money and data and trading directly between them. The same calculations that came to that are saying that for 2024 the number will be 88 million devices participating in EoT and so it puts into perspective how much this is going to grow explosively over the next 6...

May 29, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Over the past 10 years the digital expanse for businesses has become nearly all encompassing. Without going into too much detail that’s the primary factor as to why so many businesses have had to embrace the cloud as - quite simply - their operations are necessitating it. That goes beyond data too, and companies that are utilizing the IoT are especially in need of everything cloud computing makes possible. Now there are many instances in life where something can be described as both a blessing and curse. That probably doesn’t legitimately apply to cloud computing, but for some of these businesses it may be at least somewhat applicable based on all the added costs they have had no choice to assume because of moving more and more into the cloud. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t might well apply here too. That doesn’t so much apply to us here at 4GoodHosting in the same way it won’t for any good Canadian web hosting provider. But there is likely enough of the audience here that is making the move to a greater extent at all times too, and so we’ll make the expensiveness of cloud computing for businesses our topic for this week’s entry here. Higher than Expected Costs Even though most businesses are happy with the rate at which their company is transforming to the cloud, higher-than-expected costs are making some businesses revisit how they are allocating needed monies for it. All of this based on a Cloud Impact Study where senior IT professionals across large organizations in the US, Canada, and UK were asked about their organization’s spending on cloud infrastructure. 36% of the respondents reported that delivering cost predictability is one of the key challenges facing their organization. And the overarching belief is that while Cloud cost is high, the benefits don’t line up with how much is being spent on it. In addition, ‘many companies are not getting the benefit of a comprehensive management strategy they expected. The adjoining belief is that much of this stems from having rushed into cloud service adoption due to the way the pandemic nudged many businesses online. The popularity...

May 22, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

There have been plenty of entries here over the years where we’ve talked about the many benefits of VPS web hosting, and for those who truly need to have a private server it’s not even a consideration to go with a more affordable shared web hosting package. Websites that need elbow room to do what they do when pages load are often a big part of a businesses online presence, so while it would be nice to have a less expensive web hosting arrangement it’s just not possible to do with anything less than VPS hosting. With that understood, anyone with a website that doesn’t need to be accommodated to such an extent can and will be fine with shared web hosting most of the time. And there are smaller and less dynamic e-commerce websites that have been on shared hosting plans for years. There is more in the way of valid concerns around the security and integrity of websites hosted in shared environments though, and that’s always going to be the case. Website isolation can be a partial fix for that though, and that’s what we’re going to go over here with this week’s entry. It’s a topic that is going to be noteworthy for any Canadian web hosting provider, and here at 4GoodHosting we are the same in the way we put an emphasis on providing valuable information for anyone who has a website for their business, venture, or personal interest and want to be proactive in ensuring that everything stays uneventful with their site and that it’s always problem free alongside the information superhighway. Isolation = Better Security Businesses, bloggers, and web developers often rely on shared hosting environments based on their affordability and the way general management is less complicated. But security is nearly always a challenge in these environments. Website isolation can be part of a solution to reducing risks, and there are 5 primary advantages for putting website isolation in place. Better Overall Security Being more vulnerable to security breaches is natural with shared hosting when multiple websites share the same server resources. Implementing isolation techniques helps contain the impact of a security breach,...

May 15, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Anything in life that requires learning in order to have functional ability is going to also have a hands-on experiential component if you’re truly going to become adept at whatever it is. There is value in learning how to do it, but usually the most integral part of the learning comes from actually being at ground level and doing it. These days AI is the buzzword connected to nearly everything in the digital world, and that world is where an increasingly large part of everything we have and make use of has its roots. We’ve talked about machine learning before, and it’s a concept that’s fairly well understood within the parameters of how advanced computing has made advances in leaps and bound over recent years. As the saying goes, you certainly can’t stop progress and the type of deep learning that people are talking about with relation to supercomputers and the like builds on machine learning and improves on it with a whole lot of experiential learning. It is a profound subject, and more so for anyone or a business where much of what you do is being constantly reshaped by computing technology. That certainly applies to us here at 4GoodHosting in the same way it would for any reputable Canadian web hosting provider, and as AI continues its meteoric rise to prominence and increasing dominance in the space it makes sense for us to have a look at Deep Learning and how it contributes to influentially to supercomputing. Data Abundance Deep learning is an advanced artificial intelligence technique who’s usefulness is in the way it has abundant data and increased computing power. Online language translation, automated face-tagging in social media, smart replies in your email, and the new wave of generative models are among the many reasons it’s main technology behind many of the applications we use every day. Everyone will have heard of all the buzz around the ChatGPT AI-powered chatbot and the way it is revolutionizing pretty much everything, and part of its strength is in the it can differentiate images from text descriptions, exampling how deep-learning systems that model the relation between images and text descriptions...

May 8, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

It’s fortunate that these days greater number of people or businesses who are online are more aware of the need to be smart about when and where you make phone number and email addresses available. Phishing scams are likely if you’re negligent about where your contact details are accessible, and in worst case scenarios identity theft or even having your website hijacked can happen. Anyone who knows anything about acting will be familiar with what a stand-in does for an actor while on set, and they’re very valuable that way. The way domain privacy works is kind of like that it is the actor’s stand-in that it’s a service that replaces the individual’s contact information with that of the service provider. Doing this secures you against anyone who might be trying to access your details with the aim of initiating fraud or malevolent practice. Business owners investing in expensive websites will want to consider getting the domain privacy add-on when building their website or having it built for them. Keep in mind as well that contact information doesn’t need to be publicly displayed on your website to have it still be available. The aim needs to be with making sure it doesn’t end up in WHOIS records and this is a way to protect you from spambots that exclusively check WHOIS data. This option is going to make a lot of sense for man individuals or businesses, and the growing need for expanding web security practices makes domain privacy a topic that any good Canadian web hosting provider is going to take an interest in and that’s true for us here at 4GoodHosting too. So this is what we’ll look at with our blog entry this week. Who’s Name? The way domain privacy functions starts with how domain names are registered. That’s something we are explicitly familiar with and most internet domain names found in use on the Internet are registered through an organization called ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Domain owners must provide their name and contact information when purchasing a new domain name and the information is then listed on a database that has...

May 1, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Gleaning insight from conversation with others is what has made Reddit the hit it has been in the digital space, and if you have any area of interest you can always find at least one sub-Reddit on it, and usually you’ll have more than a few to look through. It’s one of the most engaging social networking sites if you like to ingest your information by consuming text and the simplicity of it is really nice too. 57 million people visit Reddit every day to chat and broaden their horizons with whatever subject it is they’re interest in, and it’s a great resource for that. Looking at it from a different angle, you might be surprised to learn that Reddit chats have also served as a free teaching aid for companies like Google, Microsoft and – most notably these days - OpenAI. Reddit conversations have been used in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems created by these 3 and we’re seeing how they’re already becoming such a big deal in the tech industry. Definitely a development that everyone in our industry will take note of as well given the connection, and here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other quality Canadian web hosting provider in that seeing an online chat forum become an open-source type of asset for these big players in the digital world is definitely something we’ll be keen to follow as well as share here with our blog. Charging for Access And it is definitely interesting to see that Reddit wants to be paid for accessing its application programming interface now. That’s the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations, and the heads of the company at Reddit don’t think they should be making that value available for free. So what we’ll see now is Reddit charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. As of now it makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce...

April 24, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Fairly common for data storage and management needs to have outgrown what you originally set up for their accommodation and giving them the elbow room they need. All sorts of possibilities and variations on and around what that outgrowing might mean for a person or organization depending on what they do and how extensive their data needs have become. For a long time now the default suggestion for any in such a situation would be to move to a Virtual Private Network (VPN). But here we are again collectively struggling to keep up with changing needs and realities, and if we were to list out all the potential explanations as to why a VPN wouldn’t be quite cutting it like it used to for people then we’d have an entire blog entry of its own. But VPNs are so well entrenched as a critical enabling tool for today’s distributed organizations and internet users. Roughly one-third of all internet users now use a VPN to protect personal data, and that’s a number that’s going to get the attention of us here at 4GoodHosting in the same way it would for any good Canadian web hosting provider. Then there’s the fact that there’s plenty ready to push this trend even further, especially with rampant cybercrime and privacy concerns likely to be front and center in the coming years. The pressure this puts on VPN providers is to offer reliable ways for this surging demand to be quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively accommodated. And the need is even more acute in high-growth emerging markets which offer massive growth potential - Indonesia, China, Thailand, India, and the UAE to name the most notable ones. The most recent and popular industry consensus is that the best way to do this is to leverage private edge computing and networking services as a means of scaling VPNs more ideally, and that’s what we’re going to look at with this week’s blog entry. Difficult, but Doable Let’s start with what makes this difficult. Heavy regulatory barriers, lacking infrastructure, gaps in connectivity, and expensive operating costs means reaching customers in these markets can prove to be challenging. The entirety of...

April 17, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Be it right or wrong, being accommodating and understanding of something or someone only occurs if basic expectations are still being met. Most of you who’d be reading this blog in the first place will know what a bounce rate is, and even though we might not know it we all have an inner clock that dictates how long we’ll be willing to wait for a page to load. Page loads and page speeds are different, though, but all of this just highlights what’s already well known in the digital world. There’s only so much waiting a person can be expected to so, and so this has lead to efforts to minimize loss and latency with cloud-based apps. The success they’ve had with doing that is what we’ll talk about with our blog entry here this week. Cloud-based technology has been integral to how many of the newest apps have the impressive functionality they do, and even if you’re not the savviest person to it you are probably benefiting it in ways you’re not even aware of based on that mini PC or Mac masquerading as a ‘phone’ in your pocket. Having so many developers catering to public cloud IaaS platforms like AWS and Azure, and PaaS and SaaS solutions too, is made possible by the simplicity of consuming the services. At least to some extent when you are able to connect securely over the public internet and start spinning up resources. This is something that shows up on the horizons for good Canadian web hosting providers like us here at 4GoodHosting, as it’s definitely within our sphere. So let’s have a look at what’s known with the best ways to minimize loss and latency with cloud-based apps. VPN And Go The default starting point for any challenge that needs to be addressed or choice that needs to be made is to use the internet to connect to the enterprise’s virtual private clouds (VPC) or their equivalent from company data centers, branches, or other clouds. And preferably with a VPN, but doing so doesn’t guarantee an absence of problems for modern applications that depend on lots of network communications among...

April 10, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

There are some people who have more in the way of long-term memory ability than short-term memory, and while that may sound good it does come with its own set of problems. Ideally you have a balance of short and long-term memory, and that will be more beneficial if you’re the type who has a demon of a time remembering their passwords. But it’s never been a good idea to create simple passwords, and it’s even less of a good idea nowadays with the news that the rapid advances in AI recently mean that artificial intelligence is almost certainly going to be able to figure out those passwords. The fact that most of us use password apps on our phones attests to two things. First, how many passwords we need to have given the ever more digital nature of our world. And second, just how many of us don’t have the memory to be able to remember them organically. So if you’re not good with memory but you’ve resisted putting one of these apps on your phone then you may want to now. This is a topic that will be of interest for us here at 4GoodHosting as like any good Canadian web hosting provider we can relate the proliferation of passwords we all have these days. Some of you may be familiar with RockYou, and if you are you’ll know that it was a super popular widget found on MySpace and Facebook in the early years of social media. There’s a different connection there between the widget and where we’re going with AI being able to hack passwords in less than a minute, so let’s start there with our web hosting topic blog entry this week. Password Mimicker How it is part of the reason that now is a good time to update your password is this. Experts have found AI systems are able to crack almost all passwords easily, and that’s just one more example of how the capabilities of artificial intelligence are expanding in leaps and bounds these days. In 2009 RockYou was the victim of a big-time cyber attack and 32 million passwords that were stored...