Internet Word of the Day Archive

May 01, 2008

Unflattering information or opinions that you may have written on blogs or in chat rooms that could come back to haunt you, for example in a job interview. "Digital dirt" also refers to unflattering information that someone else has correctly or incorrectly written about you that can be found on the Internet, usually on social networking sites.

May 02, 2008

A big move forward, a positive stride, an improvement. For example, "Thanks to the Internet, the commercial and learning sectors have taken quantum leaps and moved beyond normally accepted business practices or training procedures to implement wider, strategic uses of technology throughout entire organizations."

May 05, 2008

Business slang for completing your part of a project and then passing it off to the next group. This phrase is usually said when there is little communication between two groups. For example, "We'll get the new design finished by noon so we can throw it over the wall to the brand police."

May 06, 2008

Slang for when a manager makes decisions based on the former manager's logic rather than on his or her own experience.

May 07, 2008

The proliferation of small, single-purpose devices (such as MP3 players) at the expense of the "do-it-all" PC. For example, smaller devices, such as PDAs, are favored by many users who need to manage digital information while they are mobile (and PDAs are even more portable than laptops). Divergence is the opposite of convergence, which is the coming together of communication devices.

May 08, 2008

The precursor to market share: First you have to get the majority of consumers to think about your product, then you have to get them to buy it consistently.

May 09, 2008

An economic phenomenon in which a service becomes more valuable as more people use it.

May 10, 2008

Slang for a high-profile dot-com start-up that seemingly has no announced products. This term also refers to office layouts that are difficult to navigate due to haphazardly placed cubes and partitions.

May 11, 2008

Also seen as NOL (for Netiquette OnLine), it is an acronym or text message used in online chat, IM, e-mail, blogs, or newsgroup postings.

Please note: Contrary to AOL, the word online is not usually spelled with a capital "L." Click on "more info" below!

May 12, 2008

A company that sells only over the Internet (as opposed to a hybrid, click-and-mortar company that sells through a number of channels).

May 13, 2008

A business term for each point at which a company and its products or services come into contact with the customer.

May 14, 2008

An online business measurement that takes the number of profile elements in a customer interaction medium (such as a form) and divides them by the number of profile elements actually collected. So, anything greater than 0.75 indicates you are making the most of the information you collect (whereas anything below 0.30 shows that you are asking for more information than you use, thereby wasting resources and most likely annoying your visitors).

May 16, 2008

Slang for a signing bonus that certain execs receive for joining a new company (because sometimes it's enough money to buy a plane).

May 17, 2008

To keep your business idea a secret, often by using a code name (or "stealth name") for a project.

May 18, 2008

Slang for "sitting pretty," it means things are going very well. For example, "I saw Erin yesterday and she told me she finally got a Web sponsor, she was on velvet."

May 19, 2008

The nickname for a top navigation menu that uses a string of section names to identify where you are. For example, when searching for cell phone product reviews on CNET.com, you will see the following "breadcrumbs" just beneath the top level navigation:

> Home > Reviews > Cell Phones and Accessories > All Cell Phones

Likened to the practice of leaving breadcrumbs behind you when you go hiking on a new trail or wandering through the wilderness, these top navigation links help you find your way back to where you started by following them in reverse order.

This expression is also used as a verb, as in "we can breadcrumb this section so we don't have to pile up content in the left nav."

May 21, 2008

A synonym for gizmo, it's a specialized mechanical or electronic device, usually small in size and sleek in nature. Depending on the gadget, it can perform a number of things such a making phone calls (cell phone), listening to music (MP3 player), track your appointments and address book (PDA), even locate where you are standing (GPS)!

May 22, 2008

The result of having to deal with too many gadgets.

May 23, 2008

With reference to a traditional brick-and-mortar, big box store that exists in the real world, this play on words represents a traditional company that has succeeded in integrating the Internet into its existing channels. Click-and-mortar stores generally target consumers (B2C). For example, Gateway lets potential buyers try out its computers at their local Gateway Country Store, but customers must make their purchases online. There are also several conventional retailers (known online as etailers) with e-commerce sites that allow consumers to return online purchases at the physical stores.

May 24, 2008

The tendency of online users to ignore ad banners, even when they may contain information the users are actively looking for.

May 25, 2008

An online ad that goes "beyond" the standard size of an ad banner, such as an interstitial or a pop-up ad. This term is also used to describe a marketing campaign or online sponsorship.

May 26, 2008

In tech talk, it means the standard version of a hardware device or software program, with no extra bells-and-whistles. It is commonly used to describe something plain, as in, "The days of the plain-vanilla car radio are over, now that they've come out with a color TV, a VCR, and Nintendo for backseat passengers."

May 27, 2008

Over the Internet, data is sent in packets (small chunks of information) by way of DSL lines or cable connections. In the wireless world, packets are sent through the air, in every direction, to find broadband Internet connections that will route them across the Net. Anyone with a wireless-enabled device (and there will be many of these in the near future) will be able to walk into a space and begin communicating with other devices-with anyone, anywhere-by sending out and receiving packets of information. Therefore, the area that is saturated by wireless networks is known as packetspace.

May 28, 2008

Generally speaking, it is to forge the IP address of a machine that's attacking a server on the Internet, something a hacker might do if the opportunity was available.

More specifically is the act of email spoofing, which may occur in different forms but all have a similar result: A user receives email that appears to have originated from one source when it actually was sent from another source. Similar to phishing, email spoofing is often an attempt to trick the user into making a damaging statement or releasing sensitive information (such as passwords).

Attention Webmasters: Examples of spoofed email that could affect the security of your Web site include:

• email claiming to be from a system administrator requesting users to change their passwords to a specified string and threatening to suspend their account if they do not do this;
• email claiming to be from a person in authority requesting users to send them a copy of a password file or other sensitive information.

If your Web site provides email services to your user community, your users are vulnerable to spoofed or forged email. The reason why it is easy to spoof email is because SMTP lacks authentication. If a site has configured the mail server to allow connections to the SMTP port, anyone can connect to the SMTP port of a site and (in accordance with that protocol) issue commands that will send email that appears to be from the address of the individual's choice. It can either be a valid email address or a fictitious address that is correctly formatted. In addition to connecting to the SMTP port of a site, a "spoofer" can send spoofed email via other protocols (for instance, by modifying their Web browser interface).

To find out what you can do, click on the link below!

May 30, 2008

An acronym or text message used in online chat, IM, e-mail, blogs, or newsgroup postings.

Click on "more info" below!

May 31, 2008

Nickname for OxyContin, a prescription pain-killer used by some as a recreational drug. Also known as "poor man's heroin", the abuse of this drug is becoming more common than ever before.