Internet Word of the Day Archive

December 01, 2011

A commonly used phrase in the industry to describe when something will actually happen.

Love You Like A Sister

Unlike Wi-Fi, which covers an area of a few hundred feet, WiMax networks are capable of extending over several square miles. WiMax antennas will be able to beam high-speed Internet connections to homes and businesses miles aways, eliminating the need for every building to be wired to the Internet. And eventually, by beaming signals over entire metropolitan areas and beyond, WiMax will allow true wireless mobility, the ability to use your laptop, unwired, to get on the Internet from all over the map, not just at the so-called hotspots where Wi-Fi antennas currently provide such access.

Experts conceive that WiMax networks could create a broadband cloud that covers an entire city or country, allowing users to make Internet-based phone calls or conduct e-commerce anywhere they wander within a geographic area.

Click on "more info" to read an article about the McCaw Cellular Project Angel and a vision for a wireless world!

December 02, 2011

A series of twenty-four geosynchronous earth-orbiting satellites. The satellites continually transmit signals that help people determine their actual, geographic (3-D) position. This satellite-based navigation technology works 24/7, in all kinds of weather, anywhere in the world, and is accurate within 30 meters.

GPS technology has been available since 1995 through the U.S. Department of Defense's Global Positioning Satellite system and is used by millions of people (including hikers, divers, and pilots, and it is now being embedded in some automobiles). Computer scientists and Internet technologists are coupling GPS technology with wireless services so no matter where you are, you can use a handheld device to locate a coffeehouse near you.

A growing number of businesses are now beginning to track their workers and vehicles using GPS technology. This monitoring system allows the employer to keep close tabs on productivity and customer service. At any given time, the employer may zero in on a driver of a particular truck and can verify their speed and positioning.

As You Know

Information that is organized or arranged into a code or system.

December 03, 2011

The step, such as comparing user identification and password to a customer file, of determining the identity of the requesting client. Basically it is a security measure or "technique" by which access to Internet or intranet resources requires the user to enter a username and password. Client/server networks (such as Windows NT) and some Web sites require your identity to be authenticated before you can access any files. Authentication ensures that the person at the other end of a digital connection is the approved user.

How Nice That/This Is

Slang term for either a temp worker, or a new addition to a work staff, who covers work overflow. "He's a plug for Jean until she gets back in June."

December 04, 2011

"Preferences" offer a way for a user to personalize his or her computer applications. This includes the Web browser, e-mail, even cell phone settings. Settings on a phone such as the ring tone, wallpaper, screen savers, etc are all examples of preferences that the user sets to his or her own liking.

The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.

There Is No Gravity, The Earth Sucks

December 05, 2011

A security layer that resides between the application and the transport layers, the most common forms are SSL and HTTPS.

Insert Sarcasm Here

This term has become increasingly popular as an exclamation of sheer delight, as in "Booya, that's totally sweet dude!"

Originally a derivative of the French stew bouillabaisse, booya as a food is prepared by many cooks and meant to serve hundreds or even thousands of people. The name booya is also used to describe the event surrounding the meal.

Booya also refers to the the noise a shotgun makes when fired, but it is most commonly used as a motivational utterance, especially by members of the military, gang members, and commentators on CNBC and ESPN.

December 06, 2011

Hi There

A small file that tracks and records where the user goes on the Internet. Internet advertising companies later will use this gathered information to benefit their own business purposes. Generally, users are unaware of the "tracking cookie" that is downloaded onto their computer, as they are not asked permission for the download to occur. Tracking cookies have no user benefit and are generally harmless. If a user is concerned about their privacy, anti-spyware programs do exist to remove these tracking cookies.

In industrial design, a measure of consumers' immediate desire for an object, even before they know or understand what it does. "Gassée may be nuts, but at least the BeBox has great object value."

December 07, 2011

A networking protocol used for wireless communications. It is used with popular games like Doom2.

Online jargon for a fake blog created by a corporation to promote a product or a television show.

Check your Email

December 08, 2011

Describes iMac, the new VW Beetle, and other objects marketed as cute and friendly. A related term is iCandy, referring to the bright colors being used on such products.

I Wish I Was You

A "widget" is an application that sits on top of a Web site and offers users additional interactive features. There are thousands of kinds of widgets! Popular widgets (Google calls them "gadgets") include photo slide shows, videos, music playlists, post-it notes, horoscopes, and virtual pets that can be fed and dressed. Widgets are normally added to social networking profiles, blogs, or Web sites.

The main types are (1) a widget engine (such as dashboard apps like Apple's Mac OS X v10.4, Windows Vista Sidebar, or Yahoo! Widgets), (2) GUI widgets (which are a component of a graphical user interface in which the user interacts), (3) Web widgets (which refer to a third party item that can be embedded in a Web page), and (4) mobile widgets (a third party item that can be embedded in a mobile phone).

In some cases, widgets are created and customized on another site (such as Slide or Photobucket). The site generates a string of software code to be copied and pasted onto your page. Some social networking sites and widgets are becoming more closely integrated, requiring only a click of a button that tells the two Web sites to work together (see also: API).

Technically speaking, in the traditional sense a "widget" is a placeholder name for an object or a manufactured device. On the Internet, a widget refers to an interface element that a computer user interacts with, such as a window or a text box. As opposed to a physical widget in the real world, Internet widgets are virtual in the sense that they have virtual buttons that can be clicked with a mouse cursor (versus physical buttons that can be pressed with a finger). Widgets are usually packaged together in widget toolkits, and can be used on several Web sites.

December 09, 2011

A waiting area for e-mail messages, files, print jobs, or anything else that is being sent from one device to another. With e-mail, it is common (and some say cost-effective) to compose letters offline, place them in a queue, and send them all at once, when you get back online.

An expression used to describe the way a Web page is built and served to an end-user. Web sites built on-the-fly, including many news sites, contain dynamic content: information that changes frequently, sometimes as often as each time the page is requested by a user and loaded into a browser. The opposite of "dynamic" or "on-the-fly" Web pages are "static" or "flat" pages and files, which can only be altered by editing the original HTML file. That means the page has to be manually opened in an HTML or text editor and changed by the author. Producing pages on-the-fly is usually achieved with technologies such as Cold Fusion, Active Server Pages, or another kind of database-driven technology.

This Is So Cool

December 10, 2011

A bot is a program that runs on a computer 24/7, automating mundane tasks for the owner, even if the owner is not logged in. Bots are used on the Internet in a variety of ways, most popularly in IRCs (Internet Relay Chat) and in search engines.

IRC bots are programs that connect to an IRC network and interact with IRC in very much the same way a normal user does (in fact, IRC servers treat bots as regular users). Most IRC bots are used for channel control. Also known as "automatons," bots are disliked by IRC operators and long-time IRC users because of the system resources they consume.

Search engine bots, also called spiders and crawlers, explore the World Wide Web. For example, they retrieve Web pages and follow all of the hyperlinks within each. Once they have that information, they generate catalogs that can be accessed by search engines. Popular search sites, such as AltaVista, Google, and Lycos use this kind of automated method. Webmasters are encouraged to understand the peculiarities of each search engine's bot so that they can design pages for retrieval by specific keywords.

"Shopping bots," accessible through a Web site's proprietary technology, search the Web for the cheapest prices for products (such as clothing).

Slang for a legal threat letter or e-mail sent in response to someone's online actions or statements. Coined in homage to Helena Kobrin, a Church of Scientology lawyer who's been threatening copyright and infringement lawsuits against those posting "secret" church documents.

In The Final Analysis

December 11, 2011

Warm And Fuzzies

An online acquaintance with whom you correspond on the Internet. Usually a "dotcomrade" is someone you chat or IM with but have never actually met. For example, "So who's this GeekGrrl86 chick?" "I dunno. Just a dotcomrade of mine."

Often used on e-commerce or large scale websites, mega menus are a popular method for displaying a lot of content in a drop-down menu while keeping a clean layout.

The mega menu is big, has two-dimensional drop-down panels that are grouped into navigation options, they eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tool tips to explain the user’s choices. They are easy to read and help the design and flow of the Web site. It renders fast, which is an important component for the interface.

There are a few downsides to the mega menu. First, they cover up a lot of content when you roll over the button so if you accidentally roll over one, the content you were looking at disappears under the menu. Also, if you have a small monitor the text on the mega menu could get jumbled and overlap, making it non-functional.

December 12, 2011

Nickname for the "adult technology" sideshow that spun off from COMDEX after trade-show officials were pressured to exclude porno exhibitors.

Quote Of The Day

In computing, "plain text" is a term used for an unformatted readable text file that doesn't require much processing. There are no graphics or spell checker tools, just plain text.

The purpose of using plain text is primarily a "lowest common denominator" independence from programs that require their very own special encoding or formatting. Plain text files can be opened, read, and edited with text editors, for example Notepad (Windows), edlin (DOS), MS-DOS Editor, ed/vi/Emacs (Unix, Linux, and elsewhere), pico, nano, SimpleText (Mac OS), or TextEdit (Mac OS X).

Web developers tend to use plain text editors out of habit because of the lack of gremlins. Plain text editors are also preferred when filling out forms on the Web, in fact, we highly suggest that you cut-and-paste your text from an online resume or college application into a Word document to spell check it and make corrections, then cut-and-paste it to your plain text editor and turn the word wrap off, and then cut-and-paste it back to the Web site and review it for any formatting inconsistencies.

December 13, 2011

Put simply, an "RSS feed" is a format for distributing and gathering content from sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Web publishers use RSS to create and distribute news feeds that include links, headlines, and summaries. In other words, it is a format (in XML) for syndicating Web content so as to allow Web site owners and independent publishers the ability to easily share information. The idea is that when the published RSS feed changes, the content fed to your Web site will automatically change too.

Even though it may sound complicated at first, it is a rather simple technology that allows Web publishers to have other people's content aggregated and displayed on their own Web pages, without having to know XML. An RSS aggregator is a program that reads RSS documents and displays new items. It is another way to increase traffic to your Web site by offering your users content that is constantly changing (so they will keep coming back). Syndicated content includes such data as news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums and even corporate information. At the same time, it is also a way for authors and publishers to syndicate their content for others to view via a software program called an RSS Reader.

Originated by UserLand in 1997, and subsequently used by Netscape, you've most likely seen RSS feeds on one of many Web sites including: the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet, and more. Think of it as a box you put on your Web page that is able to update itself: Whenever the source of the information changes, your Web page changes too, without you having to do a single thing to change it. Think of it also as a program you download (an RSS Reader) in which you subsequently sign-up for RSS feeds of interest to you; they will automatically get sent to your Reader each time they are updated.

To learn more, download an RSS Reader below, try the NetLingo RSS feed, and explore the following links!

Web jargon that refers to the ability to gamble online.

See You Tomorrow

December 14, 2011

Slang for wireless.

A limited version of a commercial application. It enables developers to run a development application program that's written for that application. The software company that owns the application may require a licensing fee or may allow developers to freely distribute runtime versions with the development application.

Big Ugly Fat F***

December 15, 2011

Slang for an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon.

It Would Be Nice If

Virtualization refers to the concept of abstracting physical resources such as compute cycles, data storage, and network bandwidth, and then provisioning and sharing these resources amongst multiple applications. For example, a single server may be "virtualized" to allow multiple operating system (OS) images to run concurrently; the amount of storage available to a user on a Storage Area Network (SAN) may be dynamically adjusted on the fly; and the amount of bandwidth allocated to a given application may be boosted or reduced as required.

Virtualization began as a niche market but is rapidly gaining acceptance as the preferred way to manage and provision system resources within a network. In fact, it's become a key strategy for simplifying deployment of IT resources and maximizing their utilization. The benefits of virtualization are well understood. System administrators are able to capture underutilized resources and re-allocate them to constrained applications. Resources can be dynamically allocated and load-balanced as the characteristics of traffic and applications change over time. Hardware can be transparently replaced or upgraded with a minimum of downtime. Utilizing existing resources more efficiently in this way leads to reduced infrastructure cost, better utilization of IT assets, lower power consumption, reduced cooling requirements, and inevitably lower total cost of ownership.

Server virtualization is primarily handled through specialized software provided by vendors such as VMware. The success of this technology has led system architects to think about ways to increase virtualization¹s effectiveness by extending the same concepts to the hardware level. Companies such as Intel, with its Virtual Technology (a.k.a Vanderpool), and AMD, with "Pacifica" are implementing virtualization-specific features in their CPUs. Following along the same path, input/output (I/O) architectures are now being redesigned to support this powerful concept from end to end, with the introduction of hardware-based I/O virtualization, commonly referred to as IOV.

December 16, 2011

A play on the term digiterati, this is what the digital generation becomes after drinking too much coffee.

Hi Again

An array is a systematic arrangement of objects, usually in rows and columns. In technology, an array specifically refers to various arrangements of multiple individual components to create a single system, for example, an array in PHP is actually an ordered map. It is a data structure in which similar elements of data are arranged in a table. An array is also a group of elements forming a complete unit, such as a processor array (not to be confused with an array processor), and a Wi-Fi array (a wireless networking device). 

December 17, 2011

Snotty Nosed Egotistical Rotten Teenager

The back slash is the name of the "" character on the computer keyboard. It is commonly located below the "|" mark on the same key. Back slashes are primarily used to represent a path, such as "c:Windows".

For a listing of computer keyboard key explanations, click on the "more info" button below!

A phenomenon reported by cell phone addicts and BlackBerry junkies of feeling vibrations when there are none, or feeling as if they're wearing a cell phone when they're not.

December 18, 2011

A secure procedure for validating a network connection request. After the link is established, the server sends a "challenge message" to the requestor, who responds with encrypted authentication information (the username and password), based on a "key" in the challenge message. If the server is able to decipher the message using the original key, the authentication is acknowledged. If not, the server terminates the connection.

The latest cyberswindle, pharming, threatens to reel in entire schools of victims. It is a fast-spreading online scam which redirects Web users to phony sites where criminals can capture passwords and other data. Unlike phishing, which targets one user at a time, pharming nabs multiple victims at once.

Who cares, whatever

December 19, 2011

It is important and necessary to backup your files regularly! This means you must copy files from your computer to a storage medium (such as a disk or CD-ROM) as a precaution against something happening to your computer and causing the loss of data. "To backup," as a verb, is the process of storing your data; a "backup," as a noun, is the process of "backing up" or the media you chose to store your backed up files.

Love You, See You Later, Bye Bye

Jargon for programmers who are still at their terminals when you return to work the next morning.

December 20, 2011

A newsgroup is a forum for sharing information. Each one is an area on the Internet that allows users to post messages and reply to other users.

It is an online discussion forum similar to that found on local BBSs, but you need a newsreader in order to participate. Segmented into many different subjects (approximately 25,000), newsgroups have titles that usually begin with a three- or four-letter prefix followed by a dot ("."). For example, alt., soc., comp., misc., rec., and sci. are some of the most popular ones.

For the largest list of Internet acronyms and text message jargon, click on "more info" below!

An overused filler word said by many young Americans. Actually, it seems to have entered practically everyone's vocabulary. For example:

1. "I was like so nervous."

2. "He was like, 'no way.'"

3. "I'm like, I don't think so."

Here are a few remedies to rid ourselves of this slang:

For example 1, try using an adverb, as in, "I was extremely nervous."

For example 2, try saying "He said" or "She said to me," as in, "He said, 'no way.'"

For example 3, try saying, "I said to myself" or "I thought to myself," as in, "I thought to myself, I don't agree."

"Like" also refers to a link on Facebook that you can click to show someone you "like" their status update or photo or other piece of shared information.

Need Some Tender Loving Care

December 21, 2011

Talk Dirty To Me

The act of comparing product features of several companies on the net simultaneously, resulting in confusion, anxiety and product indecision .

December 22, 2011

Keep Your Nose Clean

Often seen on Facebook, "ooVoo" refers to a free high-quality video chat service where you can talk live, face-to-face, with up to 6 people at once. It also offers video conferencing services for businesses but is most popular for the "vidchat" application.

With ooVoo, people can connect with anyone, anytime, with video calls, video messages, phone calls, and text, often with unintended consequences! Read my blog posting below about Chat Roulette and watch the Fox News video here.

December 23, 2011

The classic definition is that of a colloquialism to mean short-tempered, snappish, or irritable. It is also a word used by author Lewis Carroll that refers to an imaginary beast. "Snarky" is making it's way onto the Web, primarily used by gamers, to mean a sort of "unknown" type of occurence, or unknown thing, (which in this case, ironically is the word itself). You may hear it in mainstream usage like this, "Who knows what Dick Cheney 's doing, snarking around in his undisclosed location?" or for example, "The GOP hit men such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were snarking John Kerry prior to the election."

Weather

December 24, 2011

Thank You Very Much

Grace and strength under pressure. A term coined by CBS anchor Dan Rather after watching the extraordinary performance of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

December 25, 2011

If You Say So

Net users who try to put out flame wars early in their gestation.

December 26, 2011

I'll Believe It When I See It

A relationship between two countries in which there is no war, no trade, no travel, and no diplomatic relations.

December 27, 2011

Similar to a digital doppleganger, it is another individual with the same name as you whose records and/or stories are mixed in with your own when you Google yourself. For example, "Hey, I just Googled my name and found that I have three googlegangers!"

Thanks From Me

December 28, 2011

The creative contribution of users who post their own content online in the form of text, artwork, audio, video, music, even comments and social networking profiles. Because the net is interactive, blogs and social networking sites are popular places for users to post their own content.

User-generated content (UGC) has been a staple of the peer-to-peer (P2P) experience since the dawn of the digital revolution. The earliest forms arrived in 1980 with Usenet, a global discussion board that allowed users to share comments and experiences of a given topic. Early versions of Prodigy, a computer network launched in 1988, also facilitated user discussions and comments, as did early versions of AOL. The late 1990s saw the rise of "ratings sites," which allowed users to rate subjects based on any number of criteria (from physical appearance to professional competence). These spread quickly across the Internet, and brought with them controversy over the impact they could have on the lives of private people often unwittingly exposed to public scrutiny. Such controversies increased as UGC sites have become more common and influential.

Another early form of UGC are forums; areas within content Web sites that allow readers to communicate with each other around topics related to the content. Even in this era dominated by social media sites, forums continue to be robust, controlled areas of user content. One of the more relevant types of UGC sites for consumer brands is review sites, but it was the advent of blogs that was considered the tipping point for UGC. It was the moment when UGC went from a small but significant component of the Internet experience to a predominant source of entertainment,information, and debate. Finally, in its most basic sense a wiki is collaboration, a Web site built through the contributions of many individuals. Though not all wikis are open to everyone, they are in many ways the most democratic manifestation of UGC.

I Just Want To Say

December 29, 2011

Bye Bye for Now

A term to describe Web sites that do not appear in a cellular carrier's preset menus but can still be accessed by cell phone.

December 30, 2011

Nonsense In Crappy Existence

Seen on blogs, this is grim air-traffic-controller speak for a head-on collision. Midair passenger exchanges are quickly followed by "aluminum rain".

December 31, 2011

Someone who endlessly downloads and decodes porno pictures from adult newsgroups.

Peace, Love, Out