Internet Word of the Day Archive

December 01, 2010

Right On The Money

This refers to the notion of having sex while being online. No, you can't really "do it" over the net, just as you can't with phone sex, but users can visit chat rooms or IM with each other as a form of stimulation.

The term "DOS" can refer to any operating system, but it usually refers to MS-DOS. It has been widely acknowledged that DOS is insufficient for modern computer applications, due to its limitations: it's a 16-bit operating system that doesn't support multiple users or multitasking.

The term "DoS" (when spelled with a lower case "o") refers to "Denial of Service." For more information on a Denial of Service attack, see DDoS.

The term "DOS" also refers to "Dozing Off Soon" when used as an acronym or text message used in online chat, IM, e-mail, blogs, or newsgroup postings.

Click on "more info" below!

December 02, 2010

Body can mean one of several things. For example, it is the part of an e-mail message that contains the actual message itself (without the address and server information). In HTML, a "body tag" designates the section of a Web page that contains the text and graphics you see in a browser window. Generally, "body" refers to the content within a document, as in, the "body of text."

Wash My Mouth Out With Soap

A person who is capable of multitasking without suffering a decline in performance. Research shows that as of 2010, only one in 40 people can effectively multitask. 

December 03, 2010

Refers to software or hardware that is so outdated, it's considered to no longer exist. (Some people joke that hardware becomes obsolete as soon as you walk out of the store with it. This is similar to buying a new car, which loses a large chunk of its value as soon as you drive it off the lot.)

Just Joking

A form of punishment given to children, tweens, or adolescents by their parents due to excessive online usage, visiting websites that are not allowed, sneaking online after hours, cyberbullying, or any other kind of online misbehavior. It is a modern form of discipline in a technological era where sending kids to their room isn't necessarily relevant because they can often text or access the Internet. The purpose of grounding is to teach a lesson by depriving kids of their social connections, which now includes technology.

A young person who is "digitally grounded" may be forbidden to use electronic devices (either completely or partially), forbidden to access Facebook or other sites (for a week or two), forbidden to use a cell phone (for social use), and may also include no TV or video games for a specified amount of time. 

Historical perspective: In 2010, the Pew Internet & American Life Project published a report that captured part of the "digital grounding" trend. It said 62% of parents said they had taken away a cell phone as punishment.

December 04, 2010

A Windows audio/video (multimedia) file, it is a common format you will find on the Internet for developing and viewing small movies and videos. These files are usually pretty large and would require a connection of 28.8 or better to download in any kind of reasonable time. A 20 second movie clip in AVI format could be as large as 3MB and could take about 15 minutes to download to your computer. Other types of video files found online include MOV, MPEG, and ASF.

The fictitious place in cyberspace where missing documents or files are said to end up. If someone says you were sent an e-mail message and you find that you never got it-and no error message was generated-it's safe to say that the message must have gone to the bit bucket, never to be found again.

Quit Scrolling

December 05, 2010

In computer science, it is a common prefix that means "about." For example, metadata is data that describes other data (see: RDF). A metalanguage is a language that describes other languages. A metafile is a file that contains other files. The HTML meta tag is used to describe the contents of a Web page.

The inclusions added to e-mail messages when a server or recipient cannot be found. Cryptic and foul-looking, they require a kind of scatological analysis to find what the router problem was. Also called, "daemon droppings."

What You Doing?

December 06, 2010

Creating queries based on user data, environment variables, and previously returned query results, dynamic SQL can also execute multiple queries and send them to multiple databases from a single browser request. This increases processing efficiency.

A Web site that gives away money for using the site. It works like this: Each time a surfer goes to an "e-lottery" site to look up sports scores, for example, he or she earns points toward an entry into a sweepstakes giveaway.

Right Back at Ya

December 07, 2010

A secret way to access an application (or computer system). Usually built-in by a programmer, it is also referred to as a "trapdoor." One example of accessing a Web site via a backdoor is to type in its IP address instead of its domain name.

Close Of Business

An MBA buzzword meaning to know and understand all aspects of how something works in order to make the necessary alterations.

December 08, 2010

An application that is resident on a merchant's server (or a server located at the merchant's ISP or CSP) that accepts payment information, encrypts it and routes it across the Internet to a payment gateway.

Every One

Withholding source code and working files until paid in full for contract programming work - common practice amoung freelancers.

December 09, 2010

Synonymous with a crawler, this is a program that searches the Internet and attempts to locate new, publicly accessible resources, such as WWW documents, files available in public FTP archives, and Gopher documents.

Also called wanderers or bots, spiders contribute their discoveries to a database that Internet users can search by using a search engine. Spider technology is necessary because the rate at which people are creating new Internet documents greatly exceeds any manual indexing capacity (although search directories prefer the manual approach).

A play on the word "atmosphere," this refers to data that is transmitted via satellites.

Meet In Real Life

December 10, 2010

A subculture and underground community (like the "rave scene") that is reported to include among its members the elite from the worlds of programming and computer-assisted composition and art. In Internet terminology, a demo is a noninteractive multimedia presentation, the computer world's equivalent of a music video.

Demos are usually made for business purposes to showcase computer hardware and/or software capabilities. In the "demoscene" however, demos are the work of computer enthusiasts who may spend many days (or even weeks or months) creating a demo, often without any external motivation (such as money or acclaim in the broader world). The typical demo creator (known as a "demomaker") is a male between the ages of 15 and 30, typically a student who is identified by a pseudonym. Because each demo may showcase several talents, demomakers with complementary skills often collaborate to form "demogroups."

Like the demomakers themselves, these are identified by a special name and create their own mystique and reputation. Demomakers gather frequently for "demoparties" which are arranged around competitions. Some of the largest demoparties have assembled more than 4,300 demomakers. The "demoscene" originated in Europe and is most active in Scandinavia, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, and France, although it is gradually making its presence felt in the rest of the world.

A phrase posted on some Web sites to indicate the absence of frames. Many users don't like frames (for a variety of reasons, including the fact that sometimes they take too long to load or aren't coded accurately-so users get "stuck" inside a frame). Some designers rebel against the use of frames by designing sites that are "frames-free."

Out To Lunch

December 11, 2010

An audio/video (multimedia) file format for the Macintosh platform. MOV files, which have the .mov file extension, are playable on the Windows operating system if you have the QuickTime Movie Player application installed.

For a list of file extensions click here!

see: eating your own dog food

December 12, 2010

A form of demoware that has most of the product's best features disabled. Crippleware can only be unlocked with a special code that's provided once you send in the shareware fee.

To remove a file or erase information.

Did I Say That Outloud?

December 13, 2010

Describes a technology or program that runs on the server in a client/server system (as opposed to running on the client-side, your local computer system). On the Web, CGI scripts are server-side apps whereas JavaScript scripts are client-side (they are executed by your browser). Java applets can be either server-side or client-side, depending on which computer executes them.

Talk To You Later

"Cyberstalking" refers to contacting a person online persistently, especially out of obsession or derangement. For example, if a man sends a woman threatening e-mails or repeatedly contacts her via her social networking page, he could be charged with a felony.

A "Google stalker" is when someone locates you by doing a search on Google and then incessantly emails you. They are said to be Google stalking (or cyberstalking) you.

December 14, 2010

To arrange information from lowest to highest.

Used by LA Superior Court Judge Lance Ito in the possible tainting of the O.J. Simpson jury by exposure to media coverage.

Thick Between Ears

December 15, 2010

The vulcan nerve pinch for SGI computers, this is the five-key keyboard combination that resets the graphics subsystem and the window manager. The term implies that you have to stretch your hand as big as a bear paw to push all the keys at the same time.

The science of coding messages so they cannot be read by anyone other than the intended recipient. Cryptography is the mathematics of security, and it includes encryption, authentication, and integrity. It is used in almost all d-commerce situations (such as cell phones) and is invisible to the end-user.

Parent Alert

December 16, 2010

A common phrase used to mean very, very, very fast, as in, "We finally got a high-speed connection."

High-speed refers to:

Department Of Redundancy Department

December 17, 2010

A direct link to an often visited site, saved in your browser for easy access. Bookmarks help you keep track of Web sites you frequently visit. They're considered by many to be the best thing about surfing the Web. By bookmarking a Web site while you visit it, you can easily return to it later with a simple mouse click, rather than having to remember or type a very long or sometimes cryptic URL.

The World Wide Web can be seen as a huge library of information, and finding your way around can be confusing at first. Bookmarks are one way of personalizing the Web experience by enabling you to quickly return to areas of the Web that interest you. Now you can organize your bookmarks easily with one of many bookmarking services. To bookmark any page in NetLingo, simply click on the "BOOKMARK" image in the upper right corner on every page and pick your service ;-) Or, to learn how to manually bookmark NetLingo, visit our Help & FAQ section.

The type of operating system on which a computer or software application runs. For example, some common platforms are Windows NT, Windows 2000, Macintosh, Unix, and Linux, to name a few.

When a program can run on more than one platform, it is known as cross-platform. When a program can run on any platform, it is known as platform agnostic.

Abuse Of Bandwidth

December 18, 2010

To make an error in typing, as in, "Oops, I didn't see that misspelling. I must have fat fingered it." Always use the spell checker.

For Your Edification

December 19, 2010

A Web site that provides links to information organized into a categorical, alphabetical hierarchy. Yahoo! is the most popular online search directory.

Unlike a search engine, which uses bots to sort its information and relies soley on Internet technology to operate, a search directory is human-organized, meaning that real people actually edit the links and classify them into the directory. The result of this distinction is easily apparent when doing an online search: instead of a search engine spit-out of hundreds of thousands of results (many of which are irrelevant), a directory comes back with links that are more accurate and better organized. If you don't know the actual URL of a Web site you want to see, try searching Yahoo! first; if you still can't find any interesting, related information, then go to a search engine (and take time to learn how to use the "advanced search" feature).

The act of clicking the mouse button, holding it down, and moving it to "highlight" a section of text. Once you've highlighted (or selected) a block of text, you can release the mouse. Your selection will stay highlighted, and you can choose what you want to do with it (such as cut-and-paste). see also: click, double click, point-and-click

I Love You

December 20, 2010

A string of incoherent letters and symbols. You may see a bunch of gobbledygook on your computer screen when a program is trying to read data from a program it does not support, or when a message is encrypted.

From The Bottom Of My Heart

A cultural meme proposing that transformative and/or cataclysmic events will occur in the year 2012 based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012 (or December 23, 2012 according to some Mayan researchers). Known as the end-date of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which is presented as lasting 5,125 years, various interpretations of assorted legends, scriptures, numerological constructions and prophecies are associated with "2012."

A common new age interpretation of this transition posits that during this time, the planet and its inhabitants will undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 will mark the beginning of a totally new era. Conversely some people believe that it marks the beginning of an apocalypse. The 2012 doomsday prediction idea has been disseminated in numerous books and TV documentaries, and has spread around the world as an Internet meme through websites and discussion groups. For descriptions of the various predictions, click on the Wikipedia link below.

December 21, 2010

An electronic library provides online access to public catalogs, CD-ROM indexes, online databases, audio files, and video conferencing tools. As with public libraries, you'll need a certain amount of mastery in order to find what you're looking for in an electronic library.

The ability to work collaboratively on a document, where everyone may add or edit text. A "wiki" is a type of Web site or tool for doing jointly authored writing using the Internet. The idea is that this kind of "open editing" allows for easy interaction between users and/or groups and is effective in collaborative authoring.

In the industry, "wiki" is said to be "the simplest online database that could possibly work." It is a server software and its main advantages are ease-of-use, global access, and low cost. Like blogging, it allows anyone the ability to publish their writing directly on the Web, however, this kind of free expression comes with a caveat: DBEYR.

The term wiki originates from the Hawaiian word for "fast" or "quick" and was coined in 1995 by Ward Cunningham. In March 2007, the word wiki became a newly recognized English word.

Historical perspective: In 2007, here were the Top 10 Wikis:

1. DokuWiki
2. TWiki
3. MediaWiki
4. PhpWiki
5. bitweaver
6. ErfurtWiki
7. PmWiki
8. MoinMoin
9. DekiWiki
10. TikiWiki

Good Night Sweet Dreams

December 22, 2010

This technology allows a user to access the Internet via a satellite that orbits the earth. A satellite is placed at a static point above the earth's surface. From a fixed position (also referred to as GEOS), the statellite is able to maintain a reliable connection to the antennas on the earth. It orbits the earth at the exact speed of the earth's rotation. Because of the enormous distances signals must travel-from earth, up to the satellite and back down again-IoS is slightly slower than high-speed connections over copper or fiber-optic cables.

In remote regions of the world, Internet over Satellite is a viable option because installing the cable backbone necessary for Internet connectivity is not economically feasible or physically possible. This technology represents a big step toward building a "global village," and it's an example of how wireless technology can connect parts of the world that previously had little or no technology, let alone access.

A browser that enables you to download an entire Web site (or sections of a Web site) almost instantaneously, so you can browse the site offline. If you're a road warrior, for example, you can take it to go; if you're on a dial-up, you won't run up your phone bill.

The latest versions of the two most popular Web browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape, have offline browsing functionality.

Jumping Up And Down Like A Monkey

December 23, 2010

Right Now

As heard on NPR (National Public Radio) this refers to boring, poorly done CD-ROMs (and any other multimedia platform).

UWB uses a huge swath of radio frequencies to transmit minute pulses of information allowing the signal to go through objects. The applications include radar imaging of buried objects (popular with the Pentagon).

December 24, 2010

A set of moral principles common to the first-generation hacker community. According to hacker ethic, all technical information should, in principle, be freely available to all. However, destroying, altering, or moving data in a way that could cause injury or expense to others is always unethical.

A standard for encrypting data, developed at IBM in 1976. It is a 56-bit private key algorithm that uses the block cipher method. (A block cipher sends encrypted data to break the text into 64-bit blocks before transmitting it.)

Made Me Laugh

December 25, 2010

Google finds over 250,000 web pages that refer to "nigritude ultramarine", a phrase that translates roughly into "dark blue." This strange phrase appeared in many blogs and Web sites in 2004 as the result of a search engine marketing challenge.

A trait, characteristic, or property of an entity. In the computing world, it generally refers to a column name or field in a database.

To Be At

December 26, 2010

One of the two most common types of image formats used on the World Wide Web (the other being GIF). The shorter extension, JPG (without the E), is usually used in association with PC platform files.

A standardized image compression mechanism, JPG is named after the original name of the committee that wrote the standard, the "Joint Photographic Experts Group." JPG is designed for compressing either full-color or gray-scale images of natural, real-world scenes. It works well on photographs, naturalistic artwork, and similar material; not so well on lettering, simple cartoons, or line drawings. JPG handles only still images, but there is a related standard called MPEG for motion pictures. JPG is "lossy," meaning that the decompressed image isn't quite as sharp as the one you started with. (There are "lossless" image compression algorithms, but JPG achieves much greater compression than is possible with lossless methods.) JPG is designed to exploit known limitations of the human eye, notably the fact that small color changes are perceived less accurately than small changes in brightness. Thus, JPG is intended for compressing images that will be looked at by humans. If you plan to machine-analyze your images, the small errors introduced by JPG may be a problem, even if they are invisible to the eye.

On the Web, there are image archives set up for Web designers to acquire graphics easily. These sites usually display thumbnail versions of images that may be GIFs or JPGs. Clicking on these thumbnails will usually link you to the larger, higher-resolution version of the same image.

For a list of file extensions click here!

A play on words, it marks the demise of a dot-com company.

Read The Screen Stupid

December 27, 2010

An alternative to Wi-Fi, it is a protocol for wireless networking (at 1.6 Mbps and increasing to 10 Mbps). HomeRF is a leading RF technology backed by corporations such as Compaq, Motorola, National Semiconductor, Proxim, and Siemens. Like Wi-Fi (also known as 802.11b), HomeRF operates on the 2.4 GHz spectrum but differs in that its signals hop among different frequencies (or bands) within the radio frequency spectrum.

Describes a piece of tech that supposedly won't become outdated (anytime soon).

That Is So Not True

December 28, 2010

Slang for a person with a closed mind.

Rolling My Eyes To The Heavens

December 29, 2010

A computer techie obsessed with finding the root of all tech problems, regardless of the relevance. A tweak freak might spend hours trying to track down something that could instantly be fixed by reinstalling the software.

Let's Have Sex Online

December 30, 2010

Another name for the CD-DA audio CD format introduced by Sony and Philips, the Red Book standard defines the number of tracks on the disc that contain digital audio data and the error correction routines that save sound from minor data loss. The format allows for a total of 74 minutes of digital sound to be transferred at a rate of 150 kilobytes per second (K/sec).

A common name for an interactive message board, this is a place on the Web where users may post and read announcements on topics of common interest. A person interacts with a discussion board by submitting forms or sending in e-mail messages to be posted via a Web browser (as opposed to newsgroups, which require a newsreader). The boards are a popular way to interact online, because they are easy to navigate and easy to use for responding to another person's message.

Trailor Park Trash

December 31, 2010

A wireless tracking technology that uses low-power transmitters to keep tabs on whoever is wearing the watch. For example, if a family goes to a large amusement park, parents can rent locator watches for their children. Scientists are using this technology to develop a device with a biosensor to monitor physical ailments (such as diabetes or a heart condition). A GPS receiver pinpoints the coordinates of its wearer, and a wireless transceiver transmits the diagnostic and location information to a computer, say, in a doctor's office (over a wireless network). Like implanted monitoring technology, locator watches raise many

Short On Time

Online jargon, it is a nickname for the drug heroin, as seen in texting, online chat, instant messaging, email, blogs, and newsgroup postings.