Internet Word of the Day Archive

April 01, 2008

Slang for a product that was roughly assembled and then left on its own to evolve into a more completed state.

April 02, 2008

In Zen philosophy, it is a riddle between a guru and a student. In the industry, Internet koans are exchanged as a popular pastime to gauge who's more knowledgable in certain areas.

Here's an example of a Zen technology koan: How can we deliberately set up conditions for something positive to happen undeliberately.

April 03, 2008

A person who gets all their information by channel-flipping between MTV and CNN.

April 04, 2008

A Japanese business expression that describes the principle of interlocking operating relationships between companies. It is a practice used by some VC firms in Silicon Valley to bring companies and entrepreneurs together (presumably to make more money).

April 05, 2008

It looks much like a large microprocessor chip, not much bigger, but sealed inside are enough components - processor, memory, power supply, antenna, lens, sensor, etc., to transform the package into something very powerful. Introduced in 1998, the "stacked chip-scale package" was a big advance over the printed circuit board. A standard circuit board spread the functions out which slowed down performance. The SiP are naked chips stacked up vertically and interconnected within a single very compact package. Imagine the standard circuit board as suburban sprawl while a SiP is a highrise :-)

The idea of the "Silicon burrito" comes from the fact that it uses a flexible tape that rolls up the chips to create a very compact method to pact additional elements - resistors, capacitors, inductors - into the same high-rise (or burrito). All of these designs shorten wires, boost speed, and improve the overall performance. This system specifically helps cell phones and digital cameras.

April 06, 2008

The capacity of a device to hold and retain data, it usually refers to auxiliary storage (or "mass storage"). There are a variety of techniques and devices for storing large amounts of data (for example, disk drives or tape drives). Optical disks are a preferred method because they use a laser to read and write data and have very large storage capacities. Data storage is measured in kilobytes (1,024 bytes), megabytes (1,024 kilobytes), gigabytes (1,024 megabytes), and terabytes (1,024 gigabytes). Data storage is not to be confused with "memory," which refers to temporary storage areas within a computer.

April 07, 2008

Silly engineer speak for a "ladder".

April 08, 2008

Intellectuals, authors, journalists, and other people who resist technology, are against the effects of technology, or write about how new technology poses a threat to our civilization.

April 09, 2008

Slang for the weekday direct airline flights that run between San Jose, California (Silicon Valley) and Seattle (Silicon Forest); San Jose and Austin, Texas (Silicon Prairie); San Francisco and New York (Silicon Alley); and other cities that have a large concentration of high-tech companies. They are considered commuter flights and are full of programmers, dot-com execs, road warriors, and other technical gurus who work in the industry.

For example, "I heard about a great job opportunity on the nerd bird yesterday."

April 10, 2008

Slang for a direct airline flight between San Jose or San Francisco (Silicon Valley) and Los Angeles (Siliwood). It refers to the unusually large number of attractive women who shuttle to and from trade shows or publicity shoots. (Or perhaps they happen to be high-tech grrls who are both smart and attractive, imagine that ;-)

April 11, 2008

A Web browser which handles common Internet-related functions, such as exploring various Web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, and online chat.

"Opera" runs a variety of operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux systems. It is also used in mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs, game consoles, and interactive televisions.

April 13, 2008

Slang for when a store's electronic scanner (usually inadvertently) prices an item higher than the price noted on the store's shelf or in an advertisement.

April 14, 2008

A play on "sticker shock," it refers to the numbing feeling investors get as they watch the Dow Jones or Nasdaq averages plummet.

April 15, 2008

A term that refers to the art and science of indexing, searching, and recalling data in documents. Equally, "information retrieval" (IR) can refer to searching for documents themselves, metadata that describes documents, or searching within databases.

April 18, 2008

A hardcore CGI-script programmer with all the social skills and charisma of a plastic action figure.

April 19, 2008

"Crog" stands for a "carefully researched blog," meaning it is a blog written by someone with expertise in a particular field.

April 20, 2008

Office slang for the people in an organization who come along behind the arrow shooters and pave the way for profitable applications.

April 21, 2008

A Silicon Valley career maneuver that works like this: You leave large Company A to work at smaller Company B; you gain experience at smaller Company B that is hard to get at large Company A; you stay at smaller company B as it grows; you eventually get rehired at large Company A several levels above your previous position. So, instead of "climbing the career ladder," you bypass it.

April 22, 2008

All the useless rubble on the net one has to plow through to get to the rich information ore.

April 23, 2008

When a piece of software has dialogue boxes that overlap and make it nearly impossible to complete a task, it's known as "lasagna syndrome."

April 25, 2008

Slang for an individual who engages in frustration-induced activities that may cause damage to a malfunctioning computer. In other words, if you see someone engaging in percussive maintenance, you can say "Dude, you are exhibiting smasher behavior, call tech support before you break anything!"

April 26, 2008

Text message shorthand used primarily in online chat, IM, e-mail, blogs, or newsgroup postings.

Click on "more info" below!

April 27, 2008

Contextual-based advertising is when an ad is placed on a Web page, in real time, based on the specific content of that individual Web page. For example, a publisher may have a sports site and traditionally sells this placement option with the same ad displayed on all pages of the site. With contextual-based advertising, an ad for tennis shoes would appear on pages about tennis events, while an ad for golf clubs would appear on a page about golf events. And with news sites, it becomes even more powerful due the wide range of ever changing stories and topics covered by each page of the site.

Contexual-based advertising has been around since 1998 when Overture introduced it with their Content Match program, however it is Google's AdSense program that has made a real impact in the online advertising industry. The Google AdSense program also places ads not only based on context but also on popularity of the ad (click-through rate (CTR)). This means that publishers maximize the return from their inventory by eliminating ads that perform badly and only presenting ads that are relevant to the content and popular with visitors. Advertisers are charged on a cost per click basis.

Contextual-based advertising is expected to grow rapidly as more publishers and advertisers adopt this performance based advertising option over traditional banners. Those in the industry advocate cost per click because the price is low and conversions are high.

Advantages:

• Performance based advertising
• Text and image ads supported
• Placement is automated and more relevant to users than run-of-site wide placement
• Ads are placed on a wide range of sites not just search engines
• Cost effective for international banner and text ad campaigns

Disadvantages:

• Ads are only displayed if relevant and popular, limiting branding opportunities
• Still in its early days, some inventory is limited

April 28, 2008

Most often used as a verb "to fisk," this word was coined by British journalist Robert Fisk who is a frequent target of fisking. It is a popular term in the blogosphere that describes the act of drawing attention to errors in a point-by-point basis, in a very critical manner.

April 30, 2008

Business jargon that refers to projects or ideas that are intended to generate a lot of money.

For example, "Their goal in working with our clients is to deliver breakthrough value by providing an end-user solution."