Internet Word of the Day Archive

July 01, 2010

The name of the space-looking outfit on display at the Intel booth often seen at trade shows and in advertising.

To hire an independent contractor or consultant, from outside of the company, to perform a particular task or project (instead of using internal personnel).

In an effort to reduce excessive thumb-typing (resulting in Blackberry thumb), hardware designers are thinking outside of the PDA and creating "virtual keyboards". The key component is an imaging chip which stares at your fingers; when you tap the keyboard image projected on the surface below, the chip records a keystroke. 

July 02, 2010

Slang for a venture capitalist, it is derived from the term American soldiers used for the Viet Cong (VC) during the Vietnam War.

An acronym used in the software industry, you will see this term when you are installing new software and you must click on a radio button to "agree" or "disagree" with a program's legal notice. Turns out that if you click "disagree" the program usually will not install itself (so most people don't even read the EULA, they just click "agree"). We recommend reading the EULA over before you agree because some of these licensing agreements now contain important information about privacy and how the company uses your data.

Click on "more info" below!

Once a company realizes it is going out of business, it retains a dozen-or-so employees who must sell off assets or settle unfinished business before the doors are shut for good.

it means cool

July 03, 2010

So Far As I Am Aware

Quite simply it is the act of copying data onto a CD-ROM. Most computers have a CD burner (also known as a CD-R drive) which allows you to "write" (or copy files) to a CD-ROM (commonly referred to only as a "CD"). It's easy to "burn a CD." You can copy a variety of files including audio, video, and data to for your later use and/or listening pleasure.

Click on "more info" for a list of file extensions!

A term for new media moguls who seek to make money by creating and managing clouds for us, "cloud capitalists" include Facebook, Apple, Google, and Twitter.

Historical perspective: According to Charles Leadbeater of the Edge, as of early 2010 these cloud capitalists are the new powers behind global cultural relations. "Their rise has sparked an increasingly vicious civil war with the media old guard led by Rupert Murdoch. This battle between old and new media powers however has distracted attention from the question of how these companies will organise cloud culture on our behalf. Elements of their business models resemble traditional public services: Google's work with a consortium of libraries around the world to digitise books that are out of copyright; ITunes U provides thousands of models of course material for free. However these companies are also businesses: they will want to organise the cloud to make money. By the end of the decade Google will have unprecedented control over literary culture, past, present and future. Leave aside issues of trust, privacy and security, commercial providers of cloud services will have strong incentives to manage their users to maximise revenues and so to discourage them from roaming from one service to another."

July 04, 2010

The paths a user takes as he or she navigates a Web page or cyberspace in general, it is the sequence of mouse clicks made by a user. Advertisers and online marketers have developed software that can track users' clickstreams. That way, they can deliver targeted ad banners based on what the user has clicked on in the past (presumably, this corresponds to the user's interests).

God Loves You And So Do I

That seasick feeling some people get with virtual reality headsets. Caused by a conflict in the brain: the eyes register movement, but the inner ear doesn't feel it.

July 05, 2010

Once a signal has been sent to a satellite (an uplink), the information is then broadcast back down (or "downlinked").

Something that is part of a company's culture. For example, "Excellent product design and packaging? Of course we do that. It's in our DNA."

Slang for describing the difficult task of taking a good picture with a camera phone.

Need Not Respond

July 06, 2010

Downsizing gone awry, it is the process whereby a company repeatedly reduces its labor force but not the work that needs to get done. Eventually, the company implodes or "goes under."

The act of checking one's e-mail even though you're certain you've received no important communication. In other words, it's when people compulsively and frequently check their e-mail even when they're not expecting an important message, and hence only end up deleting all of the spam. For example, "Could you hurry up so I can get online and check my e-mail?" "Who are you kidding, you just checked it an hour ago and all your friends are at practice." "Yeah, I know, I gotta check my spam."

Obligatory

A cell phone-based technology that enables shoppers to buy an item by simply taking a picture of it. Once the photo is snapped, the service finds the same product online. Developed by Nokia, it is basically pointing your phone at real life objects and finding relevant information and services.

It means shoppers won't have to hassle with waiting in lines or even searching for desired goods online. It can also be used in other situations, such as tourist searches for landmarks. Way cool... MTF!

July 07, 2010

Originally a cultural subgenre of science fiction, taking place in a not-so-distant, over-industrialized society, the term grew out of the works of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It has evolved into a cultural label, encompassing many different kinds of human, machine, and punk attitudes. Cyberpunk also refers to clothing and lifestyle choices. The current notion of a cyberpunk is of an anarchic young programmer.

A strategy of global management for creating a marketing and technology template that can easily be implemented around the world. At the same time, the strategy must democratize the decision-making process. For example, offices in the local markets of a worldwide company could adapt a model given to them by headquarters but could also share their best ideas across the company as a whole.

A computer that is operated or controlled from a distance.

Estimated Time of Arrival -or- Edited To Add

July 08, 2010

One of several safeguards for secure e-commerce and overall data transfer, a certificate authority is a third-party organization that creates digital certificates for a public key infrastructure (PKI). The certificate authority guarantees a user's identity and issues public and private "keys" for message encryption and decryption (coding and decoding). Essentially, the certificate authority guarantees that a user is the person he or she claims to be, and conversely, that the provider of the information is who the user believes he or she is accessing.

To link to a Web page that isn't the site's homepage.

Peeing My Pants

July 09, 2010

A term primarily used in the online advertising industry, it refers to the number of times a user will click on an ad banner. This term is also used to describe the number of Web pages a person must go through before reaching a certain destination, as in, "I can't believe their main content offering is three clicks in."

The final action of a computer-especially a mainframe-before it is shut down or "brought down" for good. The term comes from the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey when HAL sings the song "Daisy" as it is being shut down.

This phrase has morphed and also refers to the end of an event, or project, or an era, such as "It's time to sing daisy and get ready for a Happy New Year!"

Ain't That A Bitch

July 10, 2010

A general-purpose computer term that refers to the way your computer's operating system is set up. It can also refer to the total combination of hardware components -- central processing unit (CPU), video display device, keyboard and peripheral devices -- that make up the computer system.

The configuration is also at work in the software settings that allow various hardware components of a computer system to communicate with one another. A vanilla configuration means the standard "clean" and "no frills" version of a computer's configuration (no device drivers or extra settings). This is what a technician might set a system to when trying to troubleshoot a problem with a computer's hardware.

A document that lists the various online ad spaces available on a publisher's Web site and how much each one costs. It can also include content licensing fees.

If you ever receive an e-mail message that says "can you please little "r" me?" it means to reply just to that person (and not to everyone that's cc'd on the list). Most commonly used at work where a bunch of people are included on an e-mail thread, this directive means to click the "Reply" option, not the "Reply to All" option.

Change of Subject

July 11, 2010

A generic term for a system that stores, retrieves, and manages large amounts of data. Data warehouse software often includes sophisticated compression and hashing techniques for fast searches, as well as advanced filtering. Planners and researchers can use this database freely without worrying about slowing down the day-to-day operations of the production database, for example.

In terms of a percentage of the total possible audience, it's the audience you successfully attracted to your Web site with an online ad campaign or interactive marketing promotion.

The shared intellectual space inhabited by bloggers (people who blog). It is actually more than the space, it is the community of bloggers itself and their collective voice. Blogs are increasing in popularity as a way for people to self-publish their insights on the Web and because of the free nature of this expression, they are transforming the way people and journalists work together to report, filter and break the news. One example of its usage is, "Reaction was swift in the blogosphere."

Because the term combines blog and biosphere, "blogosphere" captures the essense of Web logs as part of the media ecosystem. A second example of its usage is, "I've seen that link bouncing around the blogosphere lately." And a third usage example is, "It's hard to imagine working mothers making time to surf the blogosphere after work."

FYI: As of April 2006, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months and is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years prior. On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day, and the popular blog "Technorati" tracks about 1.2 million new blog posts each day (that's about 50,000 per hour).

Let's hook up

July 12, 2010

The trademark for products that comply with SDMI specifications.

An old or outdated computer system that remains in use even after more modern technology has been installed, usually because a company has invested considerable time and money into it and it still holds valuable data. A legacy system may also be an entrenched data management platform that contains proprietary, custom-designed software. Fortunately, new software products are designed to work with legacy systems (or at least to import data from them).

A typical legacy system is a database management system (DBMS) running on mainframes or minicomputers (versus new technology solutions, which continue to move to PC-based systems).

A coworker who jokingly harasses others via the company's LAN, just to get their jollies. A network pirate may look at other people's files or send unwanted, embarrassing sound clips to someone's computer.

July 13, 2010

Slang for a software version that has so many extra features, it takes up a large amount of space on your hard drive and slows down your computer system for no valuable reason. Sarcastic users will refer to the third release of a company's flagship product as bloatware.

Slang for the process of brainstorming in order to create a new branding strategy.

Another term used for a set-top box (STB), it converts a coded signal back into its original form.

Big Hearted Guy -or- Big Hearted Girl

July 14, 2010

Playing on the space motif of cyberspace, this term refers to someone who is trained to traverse the Internet.

Based on the suffix .com, this refers to a company in the industry (with a .com Web site) whose primary focus is on the financial aspects of taking the company public (versus addressing any real market need or establishing a successful, long-term business model). Activities such as IPOs and grabbing market share (by getting first-to-market) became mantras for many dot-com execs, ultimately leading to their downfall (see: new economy). While hundreds of dot-com companies are succeeding, it seems that since the dot-com shakeout, the phrase "dot-com" is used more often for the firms that ended up in the dot-com deadpool.

An example of its usage goes like this: "He met with plenty of young American dot-com executives overseas, and they simply weren't prepared to do international business. They were just hemming and hawing, trying to convince everyone else they'd succeed."

A communications protocol that allows remote users to connect to corporate intranets over the Internet, through a secure link called a "tunnel." This technology enables users to connect "locally" from anywhere in the world, for the price of a local phone call (to a local ISP)-rather than for the amount of money it would take to dial-up the intranet directly.

My Friend

July 15, 2010

A business initiative is to propose a new program or a new way of doing something. The slang interpretation of "showing initiative" is to deliberately disobey an order from your manager and then to be proven right about it in the long run.

Just as we are accustomed to always hearing a dial tone when we pick up a telephone, so now do online users want an always-on connection to the Net. The term "Web tone" is derived from dial tone, but unlike dial tone, it implies Internet access from mobile or wireless devices (as well as from smart homes, for example, with kitchen appliances that may one day connect to a company database via the Net to download a fix or retrieve a new technology update). Overall, the emergence of Web tone suggests that the Internet will be as important a communications medium as the telephone, and that there is a demand for always-on access with the same quality of service we expect from the telephone system, if not better.

Don't Ask Me How I Know That

July 16, 2010

An ad banner that makes use of HTML elements, such as an interactive form or the ability to click on different areas of the banner.

Discarded pieces of rockets and old satellites that circulate in earth's orbit. The life span of a satellite is on average seven years; there are hundreds of inoperable satellites circling earth.

Without Thinking Too Much

July 17, 2010

On the Web, HTML documents and graphics get "loaded into the browser" whenever a URL is accessed. In other words, you may hear "Is our site down? Why is it not loading for you?"

In traditional computing jargon, a "load" is when program instructions (or data) are transferred from a disk into the computer's RAM.

A network security breach in which a network connected to the Internet is bombarded with replies to PING requests. A smurf attacker sends PING requests to an Internet broadcast address, a special address that broadcasts all received messages to the hosts connected to the subnet. Each broadcast address can support up to 255 hosts, so a single PING request can be multiplied 255 times. The return address of the request itself is spoofed as the address of the victim, so all the hosts receiving the PING request reply to the victim's address rather than the real sender's address.

A single attacker sending hundreds or thousands of these PING messages per second can fill the victim's T1 (or even T3) line with PING replies, bringing the entire Internet service to its knees. Smurfing falls under the general category of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, which are security attacks that don't try to steal information but attempt to disable a computer or network.

Crying Real Big Tears

Slang for a task that ranks low on the priority list, and perhaps takes the back burner to other items at hand. For example, "Don't worry about getting to that task today, that's a day 2 project."

July 18, 2010

A personal computer (PC) or professional workstation that's designed to fit on a desk. This term also describes what you see on your computer screen when no applications are running.

Slang for the attempt to create one product that possesses the features of two or more products. For example: "Ever since the merger, the engineers have been big banging the two software products to try and come up with a single release."

Stop Picking Your Nose, Get To Work

July 19, 2010

You Never Know

In business-speak, it means having enough customers or market share to be profitable. The phrase comes from nuclear physics, where it is the amount of fissionable material it takes to sustain a chain reaction.

The fabric-covered rubber pad that sits on your desktop underneath your mouse in order to provide a smooth surface for moving the mouse around. There are a wide variety of mouse pads to choose from (including ones with pictures or without fabric), and many are engineered to reduce friction.

Slang for archiving a working model of a computer so it can read data stored in that computer's format at a later date.

For example, Apple has pickled a shrink-wrapped Apple II in a vault so it can read Apple II software in the future.

July 20, 2010

An electronic publication, it's similar to an e-zine but is typically found in academic circles. It is regularly published electronically, either solely or in addition to a printed version.

A consumer electronics product under development, it is a headset that gives instant feedback about what the wearer is seeing. For example, if you tour a foreign country, you can put on an AR headset to view information about the historic sites you visit. Names and histories appear on the lens of the headset. It works with a visual-data display (like those projected inside the helmets of fighter pilots). By way of these tiny displays embedded within the glass lenses, images are sent from a handheld computer, for instance, by means of a radio frequency or short-range wireless networking protocol (like Bluetooth). The notion was first popularized in William Gibson's 1994 cyberpunk novel, Virtual Light, in which a bicycle messenger finds a pair of AR goggles and stumbles upon a devious plot in San Francisco.

At work, it refers to doing what you're supposed to be doing, or rather, working exclusively on a necessary task. Another word for "focused," it used to be that in school, you'd get whacked on the knuckles any time you weren't "on task."

Television Rating Points

July 21, 2010

Similar to a real-life auction in which property or merchandise are sold to the highest bidder, an online auction takes place via a Web site, usually offering items for sale by the individual who owns them (C2C). For example, eBay is a popular auction site whose mission is to help anyone trade practically anything on earth. There are hundreds of online auction sites that on any given day list millions of items across thousands of categories, such as collectibles, jewelry, musical instruments, cameras, computers, furniture, sporting goods, tickets, and even automobiles and boats. There are also B2B auctions, B2C auctions, C2C auctions, and reverse auctions.

Thank God It's Friday

July 22, 2010

The name in the industry for a live, interactive meeting held on the Internet via a Web browser. A Web presentation allows road warriors to communicate with headquarters and to share PowerPoint presentations with the sales department. Companies that provide this type of service include a suite of meeting-related tools, such as whiteboarding, polling, chat, application sharing, or video streaming (which makes real-time audio possible).

A software program or tool that enables you to block or prevent pop-up ads from appearing on your computer screen.

See the spyware definition for download resources!

A new form of Net-based investigative journalism. Becoming very popular as journalists from major magazines and dailies troll the Net fishing for breaking stories.

about

July 23, 2010

The more-aware (some say paranoid) Net users believe that the NSA has a supercomputer assigned to read everything posted on the Net. They will jokingly refer to this "line eater" in their postings.

E-mail that is formatted using HTML, as opposed to plain text, so that graphics and links appear in the e-mail body. In order to see the format and images correctly, both the sender and the recipient must have an e-mail program that supports HTML e-mail (most e-mail programs do; otherwise, the message will have broken links or broken graphics).

Smiling From Ear To Ear

The CKO is responsible for building and managing a company's internal knowledge management efforts - a system that organizes vital information from documents, databases, and people in a reusable and searchable body of institutional knowledge.

Sample salary: $100,000-$500,000.

July 24, 2010

A computer interface outlet (or plug) used to connect an external device, such as a printer (a peripheral). Most personal computers have a parallel port and at least one serial port. On PCs, the parallel port uses a 25-pin connector (type DB-25) and provides relatively high bandwidth to printers, computers, and other devices.

The sensing, communication, and re-creation of odors for a remote virtual reality rig.

July 25, 2010

Contrary to what one would think, in the computer world, this term refers to the seedy side of hacking. For example, an "elite BBS" features pirated software, lists of stolen credit card numbers, phreak files, utilities for cracking passwords, and so on.

Slang for a margin of error.

A device connected to your computer, used to reposition the cursor or move the pointer on your screen. It is equipped with control buttons, and you move it around on your mouse pad, next to your keyboard. With a mouse, you can highlight text, open menu items, or launch programs, for example.

A wooden prototype of the computer mouse was created by Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute in 1963. The first commercially available mouse was made for the IBM-PC in 1982 by Mouse Systems. Mice are now available in serial and bus versions, and there is a wide range of styles and colors to choose from.

Far More Than You Ever Wanted To Know

July 26, 2010

A relational database management system (RDBMS), the SQL server was designed for client/server use and is accessed by applications using SQL. It runs on OS/2, Windows NT, NetWare servers, VAXen, and Unix workstations. Generically, it is any database management system (DBMS) that can respond to queries from client machines formatted in the SQL language. The term refers to either of two database management products from Sybase and Microsoft. Both companies offer client/server DBMS products called SQL Server.

A company's plan for cashing out of a venture. The two most common exit strategies in the industry are acquisition by a larger player or an IPO. Never before, it seems, has an exit strategy been so important.

Easy

A play on the term grassroots, "netroots" refers to political parties using blogs to connect with the people. It is used in a couple of different ways, for example:

• "The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee were praised for reading blogs and being ready to work with the netroots."
• "You can hear the netroots screaming."

July 27, 2010

A business measurement calculated by taking a year's worth of earnings and dividing it by the average shareholder's equity for that year. To calculate ROE, the earnings can be (1) taken directly from the Consolidated Statement of Earnings in the company's last annual filing with the SEC, (2) taken as the sum of the last four quarters' worth of earnings, (3) figured using the average of the last five or ten years' earnings, or (4) annualized, based on the last quarter's results.

A hardware/software combination capable of moving voice and data traffic to fiber-optic networks from traditional copper and wireless lines.

Ape Sh** -or- Another Subject

A meetup (organized or impromptu gathering) of people that use Twitter.

July 28, 2010

The business of collecting content from multiple sources, packaging it in a standard format, and making it available to Web sites for a fee. News articles, commentary, cartoons, crossword puzzles, games, photos, video clips, and software programs are commonly syndicated online.

Refers to computer systems that support two or more simultaneous users. All mainframes and minicomputers are multi-user systems, but most personal computers and workstations are not. Another term for multi-user is "time sharing."

Roll Your Own

July 29, 2010

An online marketing measurement of the percentage of users who take a desired action (meaning they fill out a form or make a purchase).

A company that buys components from other companies and puts them together in a system that's less than the sum of its parts. Opposite of value-added reseller (VAR).

July 30, 2010

The loss of human resources, especially of knowledge workers. For example, when someone leaves a third-world country, moves to America for training and education, but then does not move back to his or her home country to share the knowledge, the country suffers a brain drain. This can also happen within a company.

The process of redirecting your incoming mail to a different mailbox. For example, if you have a number of e-mail addresses, you can have them forwarded to a single mailbox. This makes it easier to retrieve and manage your messages.

Good Crib

July 31, 2010

Whatever You Think

A two-way interaction in a client/server environment, in which the user interface is stored in the client and the data is stored in the server. The application logic can be in either the client or the server.

A tarnished use of a noun in the "computer architecture" world. "Give us the guidelines and expectations you have for your system and we'll architect it for you." Perhaps a more common or logical alternative to this term would be "design". See: information architect