Internet Word of the Day Archive

April 01, 2012

A form of e-commerce by companies that sell news, documents, subscriptions, or any other content that can be delivered digitally over the Web. Under the ultimate "pay as you go" model, a d-commerce company acts as an electronic middleman: Users establish an account with a d-commerce company to purchase content from a variety publishers, which is easier because they give out their credit card number once instead of to a multitude of Web publishers. The d-commerce company, in turn, handles the billing, collection, refunds, and other payment processes for the publisher. D-commerce is considered a form of e-commerce because money is exchanged for a product or service that exists "electronically" (in this case, "digitally"). For more information, read the column "Digital Commerce," by Denise Caruso, in The New York Times.

Let Me Know How That Works Out For You

April 02, 2012

Plastic surgery jargon for the amount and type of bodily cosmetic changes one is willing to pay for. A digital imaging system is used to simulate the image aspirations of a potential client and to generate a price list for the various desired body modifications.

Father-In-Law

April 03, 2012

Til Next Time

Computers haven't been around all that long, but they've already left a legacy - and for most companies it's a nightmare. As companies move to more modern and sophisticated computer systems, they have to find a way to integrate their old or "legacy" systems into the new system. That's not always easy. The old systems often were written specifically for the functions they performed. Data can't always be transferred. In some cases, the old systems have to be kept running and the new systems are rigged to pull data from the older system as necessary.

April 04, 2012

An error occurring on the server due to an invalid request by a user's browser. Client errors are designated with server error codes in the 400 range.

Big Smile And A Wink

April 05, 2012

Big Tease

Coined by Jeff Howe of Wired magazine, "crowdsourcing" is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined large group of people in the form of an "open call."

This term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals.

Historical perspective: In early 2012, the Finnish government enabled something called a “citizens’ initiative”, through which registered voters can come up with new laws – if they can get 50,000 of their fellow citizens to back them up within six months, then the Eduskunta (the Finnish parliament) is forced to vote on the proposal. Now this crowdsourced law-making system is about to go online through a platform called the Open Ministry. The non-profit organization has been collecting signatures for various proposals on paper since 1 March 2012, when citizens’ initiatives came in, and recently the government approved the electronic ID mechanism that underpins the digital version of the platform. That means it is expected to go live on 1 October. 2012.

April 06, 2012

Posturing of techies trying to determine who has the more impressive computer mojo.

Keep Your Bum Clean

April 07, 2012

A repository of Web pages used to speed the delivery of those pages to users. Many ISPs maintain "proxy servers" that store millions of pages copied from the Web. When a user requests a page stored on a proxy, the ISP delivers the page quickly from the proxy rather than using the Web server to retrieve the page from the Net (which can take much longer). There have been some problems with this, however (see: AOL) because content on the Web is dynamic and not meant to be stored.

Request For Discussion

April 08, 2012

Grinning Running & Ducking

A service that enables you to get Web content or e-mail over a telephone using voice recognition software. Here's an example of how it works: Instead of lugging around a laptop in order to connect to the Net and browse for information, you can opt to use your cell phone as a voice portal. AOL, for example, offers AOLbyPhone, which for a small monthly fee provides access to a toll-free dial-in number to an automated voice prompt system. You can check e-mail, get headline news, get information on movies, the weather, or restaurants in many cities, plus other features (it's similar to the kind of content that's available on a Web portal). The system will read back the information to you on any type of phone.

One challenge is that speech recognition software has a hard time in noisy environments and may not be able to accurately make out the words you say. On the plus side, after you listen to a listing of restaurants, for instance, the voice portal will offer to connect you to one of them via the phone. It is a convergence of multiple forms of technology. To try a free voice portal service, click on the link.

April 09, 2012

You Are Too Wise For Me

Also known as ad banner or online ad, is a graphical Web advertising image usually placed at the top of content pages that links to the advertiser's content page. The standard size for a "banner ad" is 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall.

April 10, 2012

When a Web site or an ISP (or any kind of public-access site) encounters technical trouble and end-users can no longer access it, it is said to be "down." The same goes for your computer or any kind of communications technology. When it's not up and running, it's down.

Not In My Back Yard

April 11, 2012

Software that allows people to share documents and work collaboratively.

I'll Send You A Letter Soon

April 12, 2012

In Any Case -or- I Am Confused -or- If Anyone Cares

This phrase is referring to an IP address once it receives its domain name.

April 13, 2012

A combination of letters and other symbols needed to login to a computer system or program. It is a good idea to make your passwords as cryptic as possible to keep unauthorized users out of your personal or business files. It is also a good idea to change your passwords at least every six of months.

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

April 14, 2012

Great

A hybrid word made from "information" and "intermediary," it describes an online middleman (between consumer and vendor) who brokers consumer data in exchange for vendor concessions on goods and services. Some infomediaries are Web sites that facilitate business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce by offering information about suppliers and other businesses. This term comes from John Hagel and Marc Singer in their book Net Worth.

April 15, 2012

Are You?

The act of picking up seemingly unconnected facts, figures, and data that eventually support a thesis. For example, "Right now, I'm just gathering string. We'll see where it takes us later."

April 16, 2012

The kind of e-mail exchange that goes back and forth with no real content and nothing new being said. For example, one person writes "Thanks," then the other replies, "You're welcome, hope it helps," then the person says back, "I'm sure it will," then another reply, "My pleasure," and so on. To end it, put NRN in the subject line or in the message.

Come The F*** On

April 17, 2012

Right Thing To Say Dude

Hip-hop slang for getting f***ED over, dissED, screwED, or rippED off, you see this phrase in chat rooms and on the newsgroups.

April 18, 2012

The process of protecting information as it moves from one computer to another. Passing through a complex mathematical process (an encryption algorithm), the information is encoded before it is sent and decoded with a secret key when it is received. Without this key, the information is undecipherable. Computers use a binary number, usually 40- to 128-bits in length, as the key. The larger the key, the more difficult it is to break the encryption and decipher the message in transit.

In other words, encryption is a way of making data unreadable to everyone except the receiver, and it is an increasingly common way of sending credit card numbers over the Internet when conducting e-commerce transactions.

By The Way I Think I Am In Love With You

April 19, 2012

A generic term used to describe the electronic cash or digital currency used in cyberspace. There are several companies working to develop solutions for online payment processes. For example, one such technology allows items to be purchased by credit card, debit card, or check, providing secure online transactions and processing. Another company is working to provide software solutions that extend physical-world payment methods into the virtual world, enabling businesses to offer a variety of secure, private, and easy-to-use electronic payment options. These solutions include person-to-person (P2P), business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), debit, prepaid, and mobile payments. The software solutions also enable merchant-specific payment options, including electronic gift certificates and customer loyalty points. There is also the notion of sending a check to a bank that in turn sends you software for access to an online account. From there, you draw funds to your hard drive for use when purchasing goods and services on the Internet. By using public key cryptography, this scheme combines computerized convenience with security and privacy-improving on paper cash (which some pundits believe will eventually become obsolete).

You Are Wise

April 20, 2012

A software program that filters e-mail messages and newsgroup postings from individuals who are on your bozo list. In Usenet, a kill file performs the same function.

0 hand

April 21, 2012

At The Moment -or- Asynchronous Transfer Mode -or- Automated Teller Machine

In general, the fourth dimension is the dimension we live in, containing the dimensions length, height, width and time. This dimension is rarely spoken of, because most people don't know time is dimension as well.

In mathematics the fourth dimension, or a four-dimensional ("4-D") space, is an abstract concept derived by generalizing the rules of three-dimensional (3-D) space. It has been studied by mathematicians and philosophers for almost two hundred years, both for its own interest and for the insights it offered into mathematics and related fields.

April 22, 2012

I Don't Really Know

Unlike normal cellular antennas, which broadcast in every direction, "smart antennas" broadcast directly at individual users. That means fewer dropped calls and doubled network capacity.

April 23, 2012

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

Get A F***ing Life

April 24, 2012

Deep & Meaningful

The computer version of "in vitro," for example: "We've created a computer model of the forest fire and now we're letting it burn in silico to see what it might do."

April 25, 2012

A phrase popularized by Malcom Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference." In 2004, the phrase became a cliche to describe any technology that people were becoming interested in. There are hundreds of thousands of blog entries about "The Tipping Point" which means the term itself has reached a "tipping p" in the blogosphere.

Laughing In Silence

April 26, 2012

Slang for software written in an unorthodox manner, with reference to the time of night that code like this is written. For example, "We know it doesn't follow the conventional rules of clean code, but we had to use a little three A.M. code to get it done in order to drop-ship the product in time."

Hook up?

April 27, 2012

The holy grail of interactive media is to be more targeted. Behavioral targeting is when the online advertiser places the message in the path of the user, based on the user's past behavior. That's opposed to traditional targeting, where the online ad is placed against content the advertiser assumes the user will be interested in. It's one of those smart Internet ideas that's been surprisingly slow to catch on because it relies on sophisticated tracking technology. While the use of BT is growing, it is primarily only offered by a handful of companies.

You Get What You Pay For

April 28, 2012

A slang, derogatory acronym for an arts major (or related hanger-on) who lingers in hotspot coffeehouses spewing strong opinions and perennial wisdom without seemingly doing much to make a difference.

Ecstasy

April 29, 2012

To stammer or beat around the bush, as in, "Stop your hemming and hawing and just tell me what you think the problem is."

That Girl/Guy has Got To Go

April 30, 2012

a.k.a. "TIFF" ".tiff"

A graphic file format developed by Aldus and Microsoft, it's used for still-image bitmaps. TIFs are stored in tagged fields, and programs use the tags to accept or ignore fields, depending on the application. You may encounter a TIF if someone e-mails you a picture in that format. (Other file types include BMP, EPS, GIF, JPG, PCT, PSD.) The shorter file extension, TIF (without the second "F"), is used for PC-based TIFF files. TIFF stands for "Tagged Image File Format."

For a list of file extensions click here!

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