Imaginary Trout

Better than Go Daddy? Guess we'll have to wait and see!

Google begins testing a domain registration service Google today revealed that it is build­ing a domain reg­is­tra­tion ser­vice called Google Domains. The prod­uct is still an early work in progress, so it’s in invite-only beta for now.Google’s small business-facing divi­sion decid­ed to build the prod­uct because, accord­ing to its research, 55 per­cent of small busi­ness­es still don’t have a web­site. Since the domain acts as a web­site’s foun­da­tion, Google decid­ed to do more to help com­pa­nies get start­ed with their online pres­ence. While Google Domains won’t include host­ing, web­site build­ing providers Square­space, Wix, Wee­bly and Shopi­fy have signed on as part­ners.When Google Domains launch­es to the pub­lic, you’ll be able to buy and sell domains through the ser­vice. Unlike some other domain reg­is­tra­tion offer­ings, Google won’t charge you extra to reg­is­ter your domain pri­vate­ly. You’ll be able to cre­ate up to 100 email address­es on the domain and as many as 100 cus­tomized sub-domains. Google Domains will also use the com­pa­ny’s own DNS servers, so vis­i­tors should get a snap­py response time when they hit up your site.If you’re inter­est­ed in try­ing out Google Domains, head to the link below, click on “Man­age My Domains” and then fol­low the instruc­tions to request an invite code.➤ Google Domains

Remember dialup?

Are you ready for the next chapter of Wi-Fi? Meet 802.11ax Now that the first wave of 802.11ac Wi-Fi routers and devices are mak­ing their way out the door, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Insti­tute of Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ics Engi­neers (IEEE) have begun to look ahead to its suc­ces­sor: 802.11ax. And this time around, the wire­less indus­try is turn­ing its focus away from over­all net­work capac­i­ty to actu­al con­nec­tion speed to the device.What I mean by that is that is that these huge gigabit-plus num­bers we so often seen attrib­uted to 802.11ac can be a bit mis­lead­ing. They rep­re­sent the over­all capac­i­ty a Wi-Fi net­work can sup­port — for instance, 1.3 Gbps in today’s most advanced routers — but only in the rarest of cir­cum­stances would any indi­vid­ual device actu­al­ly be able to con­nect at such high rates.As 802.11ac tech­nolo­gies improve they will be able to pack more high-speed con­nec­tions into a sin­gle router and take advan­tage big­ger swaths of unli­censed spec­trum. But our indi­vid­ual con­nec­tions are still peak­ing at just over 300 Mbps (assum­ing the broad­band con­nec­tion them can even sup­port those speeds), and typ­i­cal con­nec­tion speeds are far slow­er.With 802.11ax, though, wire­less engi­neers are mak­ing sure the indi­vid­ual, not just the net­work, gets its fair share of atten­tion, said Greg Ennis, VP of Tech­nol­o­gy for the Wi-Fi Alliance. Though the IEEE is still in the early stages of devel­op­ing the 801.11ax spec­i­fi­ca­tions (we like­ly won’t have a rat­i­fied stan­dard until at least 2018), it has begun set­ting pri­or­i­ties for the new tech­nol­o­gy, Ennis said. And at the top of that list is a 4X increase in speed to device, pos­si­bly push­ing indi­vid­ual device con­nec­tions into the giga­bit range.New standard, new acronymsThe IEEE is hop­ing to accom­plish this with a new radio tech­nol­o­gy called MIMO-OFDA. MIMO, or mul­ti­ple input-multiple out­put, uses mul­ti­ple anten­nas to send mul­ti­ple streams of data to the same or dif­fer­ent devices, while OFDA is a vari­ant of the orthog­o­nal fre­quen­cy divi­sion mul­ti­plex­ing (OFDM) tech­nolo­gies used in 4G mobile and pre­vi­ous Wi-Fi stan­dards.The idea is to cre­ate a more pow­er­ful and effi­cient radio that can shove more bits into the same trans­mis­sion. That would cre­ate a big­ger data pipe to the indi­vid­ual devices, which would in turn add up to greater over­all net­work capac­i­ty and bet­ter Wi-Fi per­for­mance even in the sketchi­est of con­di­tions, Ennis said.“The goal here …

More SSL for the masses.

Automattic will secure all WordPress.com subdomains with SSL by the end of the year Word­Press cre­ator Automat­tic will encrypt all WordPress.com sub­do­mains through SSL by the end of the year, the com­pa­ny has announced. The move is a direct response to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment’s mass sur­veil­lance pro­gram.After whistle­blow­er Edward Snow­den released files on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency’s sur­veil­lance pro­gram last year, a num­ber of Web-based com­pa­nies have ral­lied for reform and drawn atten­tion to cyber secu­ri­ty issues.Automat­tic’s promise is part of the com­pa­ny’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in Reset the Net, a move­ment that asks the Web com­mu­ni­ty to fight exploitable holes in encryp­tion soft­ware by pro­vid­ing bet­ter cyber secu­ri­ty — this includes the use of SSL encryp­tion stan­dards.Along­side numer­ous tech firms (includ­ing Google), Automat­tic remains pret­ty out­spo­ken about its desire for gov­ern­ment reform. For exam­ple, it is pri­or­i­tiz­ing trans­paren­cy by pub­lish­ing reports every six months that out­line all gov­ern­ment requests for infor­ma­tion and demands to have con­tent removed.Gen­er­al coun­sel for Automat­tic, Paul Siemins­ki, noted the com­mit­ment in a Word­Press blog post on Fri­day.Via Matthew KeysMore about the com­pa­nies and peo­ple from this arti­cle:AutomatticAutomat­tic is the com­pa­ny behind WordPress.com and WordPress.com VIP, the cloud ver­sion of Word­Press. Automat­tic hosts and sup­ports all WordPress.com sites ensur­ing that there is con­tin­u­ous and strate­gic devel­op­ment of the soft­ware ava... read more »Pow­ered by VBPro­filesAutomat­tic is the com­pa­ny behind WordPress.com and WordPress.com VIP, the cloud ver­sion of Word­Press. Automat­tic hosts and sup­ports all WordPress.com sites ensur­ing that there is con­tin­u­ous and strate­gic devel­op­ment of the soft­ware ava... read more »