New domain names coming soon to an Internet near you?
Nyc.nyc. Africa.africa. Sport.sport.What do the fictional domains above have in common? They could become real in the near future if the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approves a list of hundreds of new domain name extensions. On November 9, ICANN will post its latest guidebook for applying for new top-level domains (TLDs). The guidebook is expected to be approved at the next ICANN board meeting, scheduled for Dec. 5-10 in Cartagena de Indias, Columbia. If approved, the corporation will begin accepting new applications in May 2011, and the sites could go up in 2012. (more…)
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Know your cloud types
Not cumulus, nimbus, and stratus, but rather the clouds that are changing the face of modern computing. In fact, the new shift towards cloud computing is as monumental as the shift from mainframe to client-server strategies in the early 1980s, which allowed for smaller business (and the first personal) computers.The cloud has already been praised for its easy adaptability (no hardware to install) and ability to scale with an expanding website. However, “the cloud” is not actually “the cloud,” if you know what we mean. Rather, there are several different shapes that the cloud can take. (more…)
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While GeoCities is gone, fond memories last forever
When GeoCities was launched in 1995, it offered millions of people the chance to make their first web sites. As web hosting sites go, it was fairly rudimentary, but it was also free. Comedians, writers, musicians, hobbyists, and anyone else who wanted to share their thoughts with the world now had the opportunity to do so. The “typical” GeoCities page is crude by today’s standardsanimated GIFs, flashing text, hideous background wallpaperbut back then no one seemed to care.And then, in 2009, Yahoo! (which purchased GeoCities in 1999) announced that it would be shutting GeoCities down. This move received criticism from several sectors: market analysts, security experts, rival companies who wanted to purchase the hosting service rather than have it shut down. The users were at a loss for what to do, and other web hosting services offered “lifeboat” services for people to leave the sinking GeoCities ship. On October 27, 2009, GeoCities became unavailable, and those sites that had not been transferred were thought to have been lost forever. (more…)
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