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ActiveX
A type of COM component that can self-register, also known as an "ActiveX control". All COM objects implement the "IUnknown" interface but an ActiveX control usually also implements some of the standard interfaces for embedding, user interface, methods, properties, events, and persistence.
ActiveX controls were originally called "OLE Controls", and were required to provide all of these interfaces but that requirement was dropped, and the name changed, to make ActiveX controls lean enough to be downloaded as part of a web page.
Because ActiveX components can support the OLE embedding interfaces, they can be included in web pages. Because they are COM objects, they can be used from languages such as Visual Basic, Visual C++, Java, VBScript.
Source: Dictionary.com
Ad Clicks
When a visitor clicks on advertisement link to go to another website.
Ad Copy
The text used for an advertising campaign
Ad Inventory
The number of ads a website or publication can sell in a given period.
Ad Views (Impressions)
Refers to the number of times your text or banner ad is shown. For example, each time your text or banner ad is shown, it is considered one impression.
ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line)
A form of Digital Subscriber Line in which the bandwidth available for downstream connection is significantly larger than for upstream. Although designed to minimise the effect of crosstalk between the upstream and downstream channels this setup is well suited for web browsing and client-server applications as well as for some emerging applications such as video on demand.
The data-rate of ADSL strongly depends on the length and quality of the line connecting the end-user to the telephone company. Typically the upstream data flow is between 16 and 640 kilobits per second while the downstream data flow is between 1.5 and 9 megabits per second. ADSL also provides a voice channel.
ADSL can carry digital data, analog voice, and broadcast MPEG2 video in a variety of implementations to meet customer needs.
Source: Dictionary.com
Affiliate Program
An advertising program offering a monetary incentive for webmasters to drive traffic to the advertiser's website. This eliminates the necessity for the advertiser to find websites with related content to list their banners. It also increases the response rate by giving the "affiliate" websites a stake in the response rate. Affiliate programs are a great plan for the websites offering them, but the websites that participate often become underpaid sales representatives.
Alt Text (ALTernate text)
On a Web page, a text description that can be added to the HTML tag that displays an image. The ALT text is displayed by the browser when the cursor is moved over the picture. If pictures are turned off in the browser, the ALT text is automatically displayed instead.
Source: TechWeb.com
Amaya
Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents directly on the Web. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium.
Home: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/
Anchor Text
Anchor text, also known as link text is the clickable text that makes up a hyperlink.
The text that lies in between the opening and closing href tags.
Anonymous FTP
An interactive service provided by many Internet hosts allowing any user to transfer documents, files, programs, and other archived data using File Transfer Protocol. The user logs in using the special user name "ftp" or "anonymous" and his e-mail address as password. He then has access to a special directory hierarchy containing the publically accessible files, typically in a subdirectory called "pub". This is usually a separate area from files used by local users.
A reference like
ftp: euagate.eua.ericsson.se /pub/eua/erlang/info
means that files are available by anonymous FTP from the host called euagate.eua.ericsson.se in the directory (or file) /pub/eua/erlang/info. Sometimes the hostname will be followed by an Internet address in parentheses. The directory will usually be given as a path relative to the anonymous FTP login directory. A reference to a file available by FTP may also be in the form of a URL starting "ftp:".
Source: Dictionary.com
Apache
A open source HTTP server for Unix, Windows NT, and other platforms. Apache was developed in early 1995, based on code and ideas found in the most popular HTTP server of the time, NCSA httpd 1.3. It has since evolved to rival (and probably surpass) almost any other Unix based HTTP server in terms of functionality, and speed. Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the Internet.
It features highly configurable error messages, DBM-based authentication databases, and content negotiation.
Source: Dictionary.com
Home: http://www.apache.org.
Applet
A Java program which can be distributed as an attachment in a World Wide Web document and executed by a Java-enabled web browser such as Sun's HotJava, Netscape Navigator version 2.0, or Internet Explorer.
Navigator severely restricts the applet's file system and network access in order to prevent accidental or deliberate security violations. Full Java applications, which run outside of the browser, do not have these restrictions.
Web browsers can also be extended with plug-ins though these differ from applets in that they usually require manual installation and are platform-specific. Various other languages can now be embedded within HTML documents, the most common being JavaScript.
Despite Java's aim to be a "write once, run anywhere" language, the difficulty of accomodating the variety of browsers in use on the Internet has led many to abandon client-side processing in favour of server-side Java programs for which the term servlet was coined.
Merriam Webster "Collegiate Edition" gives a 1990 definition: a short application program especially for performing a simple specific task.
Source: Dictionary.com
Application Program
A complete, self-contained program that performs a specific function directly for the user. This is in contrast to system software such as the operating system kernel, server processes and libraries which exists to support application programs.
Editors for various kinds of documents, spreadsheets, and text formatters are common examples of applications. Network applications include clients such as those for FTP, electronic mail, telnet and WWW.
The term is used fairly loosely, for instance, some might say that a client and server together form a distributed application, others might argue that editors and compilers were not applications but tools for building applications.
One distinction between an application program and the operating system is that applications always run in "user mode" (or "non-privileged mode"), while operating systems and related utilities may run in "supervisor mode" (or "privileged mode").
The term may also be used to distinguish programs which communicate via a graphical user interface from those which are executed from the command line.
Source: Dictionary.com
Article Bots
Computer programs that search for articles on your favorite subject. They're the oldest bots.
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
A code for information exchange between computers made by different companies; a string of 7 binary digits represents each character; used in most microcomputers.
Source: Dictionary.com
Authoring Tool
An "authoring tool" is any software that is used to produce content for publishing on the Web.
Authoring tools include:
Editing tools specifically designed to produce Web content (e.g., WYSIWYG HTML and XML editors);
Tools that offer the option of saving material in a Web format (e.g., word processors or desktop publishing packages);
Tools that transform documents into Web formats (e.g., filters to transform desktop publishing formats to HTML);
Tools that produce multimedia, especially where it is intended for use on the Web (e.g., video production and editing suites, SMIL authoring packages);
Tools for site management or site publication, including tools that automatically generate Web sites dynamically from a database, on-the-fly conversion and Web site publishing tools; Tools for management of layout (e.g., CSS formatting tools).
Source: W3.org
Autoresponder
A mail utility that automatically sends a reply to an e-mail message. Autoresponders are used to send back boilerplate information on a topic without having the requester do anything more than e-mail a particular address. They are also used to send a confirmation that the message has been received.
Source: TechWeb.com
Bandwidth
A data transmission rate; the maximum amount of information (bits/second) that can be transmitted along a channel.
Source: Dictionary.com
BBS (Bulletin Board System)
A computer and associated software which typically provides an electronic message database where people can log in and leave messages. Messages are typically split into topic groups similar to the newsgroups on Usenet (which is like a distributed BBS). Any user may submit or read any message in these public areas.
Apart from public message areas, a BBS may provide archives of files, personal electronic mail and any other services or activities of interest to the bulletin board's system operator (the "sysop"). Thousands of local BBSes are in operation throughout the world, typically run by amateurs for fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Although BBSes have traditionally been the domain of hobbyists, an increasing number of BBSes are connected directly to the Internet, and many BBSes are currently operated by government, educational, and research institutions. Fans of Usenet and Internet or the big commercial time-sharing bboards such as CompuServe, CIX and GEnie tend to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they serve a valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in the personal-micro world who would otherwise be unable to exchange code at all.
Use of this term for a Usenet newsgroup generally marks one either as a newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer predating Usenet.
Source: Dictionary.com
BCC (Blind Carbon Copy)
The field in an e-mail header that names additional recipients for the message. It is similar to carbon copy (cc), but the names do not appear in the recipient's message. Not all e-mail systems support the bcc feature.
Source: TechWeb.com
Beacon Pages
A webpage created to increase search engine rankings by increasing the number of "related" pages linking to your main website. They take advantage of search engines' new emphasis on pages that have many links from related websites in determining relevance to a search term. They are Doorway Pages with a different address.
Bit
A fundamental unit of information having just two possible values, as either of the binary digits 0 or 1.
Source: Dictionary.com
Bot (roBOT)
A program used on the Internet that performs a repetitive function such as posting a message to multiple newsgroups or searching for information or news. Bots are used to provide comparison shopping. Bots also keep a channel open on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The term is used for all variety of macros and intelligent agents that are Internet or Web related.
Source: TechWeb.com
Bps (Bits Per Second)
The rate at which data is transferred (as by a modem).
Source: Dictionary.com
Browser
A program which allows a person to read hypertext. The browser gives some means of viewing the contents of nodes (or "pages") and of navigating from one node to another.
Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Opera, Internet Explorer are examples for browsers for the World Wide Web. They act as clients to remote web servers.
Source: Dictionary.com
Byte
A sequence of 8 bits (enough to represent one character of alphanumeric data) processed as a single unit of information.
Source: Dictionary.com
Cache
A cache (pronounced CASH) is a place to store something temporarily. The files you automatically request by looking at a Web page are stored on your hard disk in a cache subdirectory under the directory for your browser (for example, Internet Explorer). When you return to a page you've recently looked at, the browser can get it from the cache rather than the original server, saving you time and the network the burden of some additional traffic. You can usually vary the size of your cache, depending on your particular browser.
Source: Dictionary.com
Catch-All
A program that allows any email sent to your domain to go to a particular email address. That allows any email sent to a misspelled or unused username will still get to a person who can deal with them.
Certificate Authority
An entity (typically a company) that issues digital certificates to other entities (organizations or individuals) to allow them to prove their identity to others. A Certificate Authority might be an external company such as VeriSign that offers digital certificate services or they might be an internal organization such as a corporate MIS department. The Certificate Authority's chief function is to verify the identity of entities and issue digital certificates attesting to that identity.
Source: Dictionary.com
Click-Through
The action when a user clicks on your search listing and arrives at your Web site.
Source: Overture.com
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The number of clicks of all of your listings in a category received divided by the number of impressions received.
Source: Overture.com
Client
A computer system or process that requests a service of another computer system or process (a "server") using some kind of protocol and accepts the server's responses. A client is part of a client-server software architecture.
For example, a workstation requesting the contents of a file from a file server is a client of the file server.
Source: Dictionary.com
Cold Fusion
An application development tool from Macromedia for writing Web pages that interact with databases. Instead of writing tedious CGI and Perl scripts, operations are coded in the ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) which uses HTML-like tags embedded in the Web pages. The ColdFusion engine, which interfaces with a Windows-based Web server, interprets the codes, accesses the database and delivers the results as HTML pages for the Web browser. ColdFusion was originally developed by Allaire Corporation, Cambridge, MA, which merged with Macromedia in 2001.
Source: TechWeb.com
Command Line
Commands that a user types in in order to run an application.
Source: Dictionary.com
Comment Tag
An HTML tag where you can add your own comments. < !-- Your Comment Here -- > Invisible to your website visitors and is ideally used to mark sections of your page for future revision.
Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
A standard for running external programs from a World Wide Web HTTP server. CGI specifies how to pass arguments to the executing program as part of the HTTP request. It also defines a set of environment variables. Commonly, the program will generate some HTML which will be passed back to the browser but it can also request URL redirection.
CGI allows the returned HTML (or other document type) to depend in any arbitrary way on the request. The CGI program can, for example, access information in a database and format the results as HTML. A CGI program can be any program which can accept command line arguments. Perl is a common choice for writing CGI scripts. Some HTTP servers require CGI programs to reside in a special directory, often "/cgi-bin" but better servers provide ways to distinguish CGI programs so they can be kept in the same directories as the HTML files to which they are related.
Whenever the server receives a CGI execution request it creates a new process to run the external program. If the process fails to terminate for some reason, or if requests are received faster than the server can respond to them, the server may become swamped with processes.
In order to improve performance, Netscape devised NSAPI and Microsoft developed the ISAPI standard which allow CGI-like tasks to run as part of the main server process, thus avoiding the overhead of creating a new process to handle each CGI invocation.
Source: Dictionary.com
Compound Document Format (CDF)
A Compound Document is the W3C term for a document that combines multiple formats, such as XHTML, SVG, SMIL and XForms.
Home: http://www.w3.org/2004/CDF/
Content Management
Before we can define content management, we first have to find content. Content is esentially any information, you don't have to work in the media industry to produce content. Instruction manuals, marketing materials, customer service e-mails, and invoices are all content. Content management usually refers to what is now called Web content management — software, usually driven by a database, that simplifies and automates the construction of Web pages.
Source: IntranetJournal.com
See also: Document Management, Enterprise Content Management
Conversion
A conversion is typically a sale, newsletter sign-up, product registration, price quote or other type of lead-generation activity.
Source: Overture.com
Conversion Rate
How many visits to your site converted to a sale or action.
Source: Overture.com
Cookie
A collection of information, usually including a username and the current date and time, stored on the local computer of a person using the World Wide Web, used chiefly by websites to identify users who have previously registered or visited the site.
Source: Dictionary.com
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
The amount an advertiser pays to acquire a customer.
Source: Overture.com
Crawler
Also known as a "Web crawler," "spider," "ant," "robot" (bot) and "intelligent agent," a crawler is a program that searches for information on the Web. It is used to locate HTML pages by content or by following hypertext links from page to page. Search engines use crawlers to find new Web pages that are summarized and added to their indexes.
Source: TechWeb.com
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
Enterprise-wide software applications that allow companies to manage every aspect of their relationship with a customer. The aim of these systems is to assist in building lasting customer relationships - to turn customer satisfaction into customer loyalty.
Customer information acquired from sales, marketing, customer service, and support is captured and stored in a centralized database. The system may provide data-mining facilities that support an opportunity management system. It may also be integrated with other systems such as accounting and manufacturing for a truly enterprise-wide system with thousands of users.
Source: Dictionary.com
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
A simple stylesheet for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents.
Home: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
CSV (Comma-Separated Values) File
In computers, a CSV (comma-separated values) file contains the values in a table as a series of ASCII text lines organized so that each column value is separated by a comma from the next column's value and each row starts a new line.
A CSV file is a way to collect the data from any table so that it can be conveyed as input to another table-oriented application such as a relational database application. Microsoft Excel, a leading spreadsheet or relational database application, can read CSV files. A CSV file is sometimes referred to as a flat file.
Source: WhatIs.com
Cyberspace
The electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.
Source: Dictionary.com
Data
Numbers, characters, images, or other method of recording, in a form which can be assessed by a human or (especially) input into a computer, stored and processed there, or transmitted on some digital channel. Computers nearly always represent data in binary.
Data on its own has no meaning, only when interpreted by some kind of data processing system does it take on meaning and become information.
People or computers can find patterns in data to perceive information, and information can be used to enhance knowledge. Since knowledge is prerequisite to wisdom, we always want more data and information. But, as modern societies verge on information overload, we especially need better ways to find patterns.
Source: Dictionary.com
Database Management System (DBMS)
A software system that facilitates the creation and maintenance and use of an electronic database.
Source: Dictionary.com
Database
One or more large structured sets of persistent data, usually associated with software to update and query the data. A simple database might be a single file containing many records, each of which contains the same set of fields where each field is a certain fixed width.
A database is one component of a database management system.
Source: Dictionary.com
Dial Up
A temporary, as opposed to dedicated, connection between machines established over a telephone line using modems.
Source: Dictionary.com
Digital Asset Management
A system that creates a centralized repository for digital files that allows the content to be archived, searched and retrieved. The digital content is stored in databases called asset repositories while metada such as photo captions, article key words, advertiser names, contact names, file names or low-resolution thumbnail images are stored in separate databases called media catalogs and point to the original items. Digital asset management also is known as enterprise digital asset management, media asset management or digital asset warehousing.
Source: IntranetJournal.com
Digital Certificate
A digital certificate is an electronic "credit card" that establishes your credentials when doing business or other transactions on the Web. It is issued by a certification authority (CA). It contains your name, a serial number, expiration dates, a copy of the certificate holder's public key (used for encrypting messages and digital signatures), and the digital signature of the certificate-issuing authority so that a recipient can verify that the certificate is real. Some digital certificates conform to a standard, X.509. Digital certificates can be kept in registries so that authenticating users can look up other users' public keys.
Source: Whatis.com
Digital Rights Management
A system for protecting the copyrights of data circulated via the Internet by enabling secure distribution and/or disabling illegal distribution of the data. Typically, a DRM system protects intellectual property by either encrypting the data so that it can only be accessed by authorized users or marking the content with a digital watermark or similar method so that the content can not be freely distributed.
Source: IntranetJournal.com
DNS (Domain Name System)
A general-purpose distributed, replicated, data query service chiefly used on Internet for translating hostnames into Internet addresses. Also, the style of hostname used on the Internet, though such a name is properly called a fully qualified domain name. DNS can be configured to use a sequence of name servers, based on the domains in the name being looked for, until a match is found.
The name resolution client (e.g. Unix's gethostbyname() library function) can be configured to search for host information in the following order: first in the local /etc/hosts file, second in NIS and third in DNS. This sequencing of Naming Services is sometimes called "name service switching". Under Solaris is configured in the file /etc/nsswitch.conf.
DNS can be queried interactively using the command nslookup. It is defined in STD 13, RFC 1034, RFC 1035, RFC 1591.
BIND is a common DNS server.
Source: Dictionary.com
Document Management
Traditionally, document management is a term used to manage internal documents and making the them easier to share within an organization. It differs from traditional Web content because the content is not published on the Web for all to see.
Source: IntranetJournal.com
Domain Name
A series of alphanumeric strings separated by periods, such as www.hmco.com, that is an address of a computer network connection and that identifies the owner of the address.
Source: Dictionary.com
Doorway Pages
A webpage designed to rank well on a specific search engine for a specific keyword phrase. These pages usually rely on frequent repetition of the keyword phrase, and often try to "trick" search engines into ranking them well.
Downloading
To transfer (data or programs) from a server or host computer to one's own computer or device.
Source: Dictionary.com
DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
A family of digital telecommunications protocols designed to allow high speed data communication over the existing copper telephone lines between end-users and telephone companies.
When two conventional modems are connected through the telephone system (PSTN), it treats the communication the same as voice conversations. This has the advantage that there is no investment required from the telephone company (telco) but the disadvantage is that the bandwidth available for the communication is the same as that available for voice conversations, usually 64 kb/s (DS0) at most. The twisted-pair copper cables into individual homes or offices can usually carry significantly more than 64 kb/s but the telco needs to handle the signal as digital rather than analog.
There are many implementation of the basic scheme, differing in the communication protocol used and providing varying service levels. The throughput of the communication can be anything from about 128 kb/s to over 8 Mb/s, the communication can be either symmetric or asymmetric (i.e. the available bandwidth may or may not be the same upstream and downstream). Equipment prices and service fees also vary considerably.
The first technology based on DSL was ISDN, although ISDN is not often recognized as such nowadays. Since then a large number of other protocols have been developed, collectively referred to as xDSL, including HDSL, SDSL, ADSL, and VDSL. As yet none of these have reached very wide deployment but wider deployment is expected for the future.
Source: Dictionary.com
DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
A family of digital telecommunications protocols designed to allow high speed data communication over the existing copper telephone lines between end-users and telephone companies.
When two conventional modems are connected through the telephone system (PSTN), it treats the communication the same as voice conversations. This has the advantage that there is no investment required from the telephone company (telco) but the disadvantage is that the bandwidth available for the communication is the same as that available for voice conversations, usually 64 kb/s (DS0) at most. The twisted-pair copper cables into individual homes or offices can usually carry significantly more than 64 kb/s but the telco needs to handle the signal as digital rather than analog.
There are many implementation of the basic scheme, differing in the communication protocol used and providing varying service levels. The throughput of the communication can be anything from about 128 kb/s to over 8 Mb/s, the communication can be either symmetric or asymmetric (i.e. the available bandwidth may or may not be the same upstream and downstream). Equipment prices and service fees also vary considerably.
The first technology based on DSL was ISDN, although ISDN is not often recognized as such nowadays. Since then a large number of other protocols have been developed, collectively referred to as xDSL, including HDSL, SDSL, ADSL, and VDSL. As yet none of these have reached very wide deployment but wider deployment is expected for the future.
Source: Dictionary.com
Dynamic HTML (DHTML)
An extension of HTML giving greater control over the layout of page elements and the ability to have web pages which change and interact with the user without having to communicate with the server.
DHTML was created by Microsoft can be viewed in Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.0 but, as usual, Microsoft and Netscape disagree on how DHTML should be implemented. The Document Object Model Group of the World Wide Web Consortium is developing standards for DHTML.
Source: Dictionary.com
Electronic Commerce
Electronic commerce includes buying and selling over the World-Wide Web and the Internet, electronic funds transfer, smart cards, digital cash (e.g. Mondex), and all other ways of doing business over digital networks.
Electronic Mail (E-mail)
Messages automatically passed from one computer user to another, often through computer networks and/or via modems over telephone lines.
Source: Dictionary.com
Encryption
To alter (a file, for example) using a secret code so as to be unintelligible to unauthorized parties.
Source: Dictionary.com
Enterprise Content Management
A more recent term describing newer applications that feature both Web content management and document management. In other words, ECM systems managle all of the content within an enterprise, usually using some type of central repository. The goal is better control of assets, such as logos or ext for a company brochure, by keeping them in one place where various departments can get to them. WebReference published an article that explains the concept of ECM in more detail: http://www.webreference.com/internet/enterprise/index.html.
Source: IntranetJournal.com
Extranet
An extension of an institution's intranet, especially over the World Wide Web, enabling communication between the institution and people it deals with, often by providing limited access to its intranet.
The extension of a company's intranet out onto the Internet, e.g. to allow selected customers, suppliers and mobile workers to access the company's private data and applications via the World-Wide Web. This is in contrast to, and usually in addition to, the company's public web site which is accessible to everyone. The difference can be somewhat blurred but generally an extranet implies real-time access through a firewall of some kind.
Such facilities require very careful attention to security but are becoming an increasingly important means of delivering services and communicating efficiently.
Source: Dictionary.com
E-Zine (Electronic Magazine)
A magazine that is published electronically, especially on the Internet.
Firewall
A security system consisting of a combination of hardware and software that limits the exposure of a computer or computer network to attack from crackers; commonly used on local area networks that are connected to the internet.
Source: Dictionary.com
Flame
To write incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude or with hostility toward a particular person or group of people in an email or discussion group.
Flash
An animated graphics technology and format from Macromedia. Macromedia's Flash MX and Freehand applications, as well as many other third-party authoring programs, generate Flash files, which can be viewed through a Web browser plug-in (the Flash player) or multimedia applications that access the player directly. Flash files can include sound.
Flash uses the .FLA file extension for source files and .SWF extension for the Flash "movie" that is created and played. Flash files are widely used on the Web because the SWF format is very space-efficient. Other movie files (AVI, MPG, etc. ) files are massive by comparison and are not designed for interaction. Originally, the SWF extension meant "ShockWave Flash," which has confused people, because Shockwave is another Macromedia format created by its Director software. Shockwave files use the .DCR extension. Today, Macromedia calls the SWF format the "Small Web Format."
Flash supports vector graphics images, which scale with the application window as it is resized. Animation is choreographed using one or more sequential timelines in which actions and interactions are defined.
Source: TechWeb.com
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
A communications protocol governing the transfer of files from one computer to another over a network.
Source: Dictionary.com
Gopher
A type of Internet service first floated around 1991 and obsolesced around 1995 by the World Wide Web. Gopher presents a menuing interface to a tree or graph of links; the links can be to documents, runnable programs, or other gopher menus arbitrarily far across the net.
Source: Dictionary.com
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
A user interface based on graphics (icons and pictures and menus) instead of text; uses a mouse as well as a keyboard as an input device.
Source: Dictionary.com
Groupware
Software that integrates work on a single project by several concurrent users at separated workstations.
Typically, groupware enables scheduling meetings and allocating resources; e-mail; password protection for documents; telephone utilities; electronic newsletters; and file distribution. Also called workgroup productivity software.
Source: Dictionary.com, IntranetJournal.com
HTTPd
Hypertext transfer protocol daemon. An HTTP/1.0-compatible server, written by Rob McCool of NCSA, for making hypertext and other documents available to World Wide Web browsers.
HTTPd is designed to be small and fast and to work with most HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1.0 browsers. You can customise your server to execute searches and handle HTML forms. It also supports server side include files, allowing you to include the output of commands or other files in HTML documents.
Source: Dictionary.com
Hypermedia
A computer-based information retrieval system that enables a user to gain or provide access to texts, audio and video recordings, photographs, and computer graphics related to a particular subject.
Source: Dictionary.com
Hypertext
A term coined by Ted Nelson around 1965 for a collection of documents (or "nodes") containing cross-references or "links" which, with the aid of an interactive browser program, allow the reader to move easily from one document to another.
IP Address
An identifying number for a computer, often used to calculate how many visitors came to a site.
Source: Overture.com
IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
A client-server chat system of large (often worldwide) networks. IRC is structured as networks of Internet servers, each accepting connections from client programs, one per user.
The IRC community and the Usenet and MUD communities overlap to some extent, including both hackers and regular folks who have discovered the wonders of computer networks. Some Usenet jargon has been adopted on IRC, as have some conventions such as emoticons. There is also a vigorous native jargon.
The largest and first IRC network is EFNet, with a smaller breakaway network called the Undernet having existed since 1992, and dozens of other networks having appeared (and sometimes disappeared) since.
Source: Dictionary.com
ISP (Internet Service Provider)
A company which provides other companies or individuals with access to, or presence on, the Internet. Most ISPs are also Internet Access Providers; extra services include help with design, creation and administration of World-Wide Web sites, training, and administration of intranets.
Source: Dictionary.com
Java Servlet
A Java program that runs as part of a network service, typically an HTTP server and responds to requests from clients.
The most common use for a servlet is to extend a web server by generating web content dynamically. For example, a client may need information from a database; a servlet can be written that receives the request, gets and processes the data as needed by the client and then returns the result to the client.
Applets are also written in Java but run inside the JVM of a HTML browser on the client. Servlets and applets allow the server and client to be extended in a modular way by dynamically loading code which communicates with the main program via a standard programming interface.
Servlets are more flexible than CGI scripts and, being written in Java, more portable.
The spelling "servelet" is occasionally seen but JavaSoft spell it "servlet". There is no such thing as a "serverlet".
Home: http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/.
Source: Dictionary.com
Java
A simple, object-oriented, distributed, interpreted, robust, secure, architecture-neutral, portable, multithreaded, dynamic, buzzword-compliant, general-purpose programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in 1995(?). Java supports programming for the Internet in the form of platform-independent Java "applets".
Java is similar to C++ without operator overloading (though it does have method overloading), without multiple inheritance, and extensive automatic coercions. It has automatic garbage collection.
Java programs can run stand-alone on small computers. The interpreter and class support take about 40 kilobytes; adding the standard libraries and thread support (essentially a self-contained microkernel) adds an additional 175Kb.
Java extends C++'s object-oriented facilities with those of Objective C for dynamic method resolution.
Java has an extensive library of routines for TCP/IP protocols like HTTP and FTP. Java applications can access objects across the Internet via URLs as easily as on the local file system.
The Java compiler and linker both enforce strong type checking - procedures must be explicitly typed. Java supports the creation of virus-free, tamper-free systems with authentication based on public-key encryption.
The Java compiler generates an architecture-neutral object file executable on any processor supporting the Java run-time system. The object code consists of bytecode instructions designed to be both easy to interpret on any machine and easily translated into native machine code at load time.
The Java libraries provide portable interfaces. For example, there is an abstract Window class and implementations of it for Unix, Microsoft Windows and the Macintosh. The run-time system is written in POSIX-compliant ANSI C. Java applets can be executed as attachments in World-Wide Web documents using either Sun's HotJava browser or Netscape Navigator version 2.0.
Home: http://java.sun.com.
Source: Dictionary.com
JavaScript
Netscape's simple, cross-platform, World-Wide Web scripting language, only very vaguely related to Java (which is a Sun trademark). JavaScript is intimately tied to the World-Wide Web, and currently runs in only three environments - as a server-side scripting language, as an embedded language in server-parsed HTML, and as an embedded language run in web browsers where it is the most important part of DHTML.
JavaScript has a simplified {C}-like syntax and is tightly integrated with the browser Document Object Model. It is useful for implementing enhanced forms, simple web database front-ends, and navigation enhancements.
JavaScript originated from Netscape and, for a time, only their products supported it. Microsoft now supports a work-alike called JScript. The resulting inconsistencies make it difficult to write JavaScript that behaves the same in all browsers. This could be attributed to the slow progress of JavaScript through the standards bodies.
JavaScript runs "100x" slower than {C}, as it is purely interpreted (Java runs "10x" slower than C code). Netscape and allies say JavaScript is an "open standard" in an effort to keep Microsoft from monopolising web software as they have desktop software. Netscape and Sun have co-operated to enable Java and JavaScript to exchange messages and data.
Source: Dictionary.com
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
The original name of the committee that designed the standard image compression algorithm. JPEG is designed for compressing either full-colour or grey-scale digital images of "natural", real-world scenes. It does not work so well on non-realistic images, such as cartoons or line drawings. JPEG does not handle compression of black-and-white (1 bit-per-pixel) images or moving pictures. Standards for compressing those types of images are being worked on by other committees, named JBIG and MPEG.
Home: http://www.jpeg.org.
Filename extension: .jpg, .jpeg.
Source: Dictionary.com
Kernel
The essential part of Unix or other operating systems, responsible for resource allocation, low-level hardware interfaces, security etc.
Source: Dictionary.com
Kilobit
1000 Bits.
Kilobyte
1000 Bytes.
LAN (Local Area Network)
A system that links together electronic office equipment, such as computers and word processors, and forms a network within an office or building.
Source: Dictionary.com
Link Exchange
A link you place on your webpage with the understanding that the linked webpage will create a link to your site.
See Also: Reciprocal Link
Login
The process of identifying oneself to a computer, usually by entering one's username and password.
Source: Dictionary.com
Mail Bomb
A huge number of e-mail messages sent to one destination or an e-mail with an extremely large attached file. Mail bombs are sent to antagonize their recipients and/or to cause them problems by filling up their disks and overloading the system.
Source: TechWeb.com
Marquee
A horizontally scrolling text message. Usually done with Javascript.
Megabit
One million Bits.
Megabyte
One million Bytes. 1000 KiloBytes.
Merchant Account
This is an account set up with a merchant bank to process credit card orders from customers.
Merchant Bank
A credit card processing bank; merchants receive credit for credit card receipts less a processing fee.
Source: Dictionary.com
Meta Tag
An HTML tag that identifies the contents of a Web page for the search engines. Meta tags are hidden on the page, but they, as well as all the HTML code on a page, can be viewed by selecting View/Source or View/Page Source from the browser menu. Meta tags contain a general description of the page, keywords and copyright information.
Source: TechWeb.com
MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
A communications protocol that allows for the transmission of data in many forms, such as audio, binary, or video.
Source: Dictionary.com
Mirror Site
An archive site or web site which keeps a copy of some or all files at another site so as to make them more quickly available and to reduce the load on the source site.
It is generally best to use the mirror that is physically closest to you as this will usually give the fastest download.
Such mirroring is usually done for specific whole directories or files on a specific remote server as opposed to a cache or proxy server which keeps copies of everything that is requested via it.
For example, src.doc.ic.ac.uk is the main UK mirror for the GNU archive at gnu.org.
Source: Dictionary.com
Modem
A device for transmitting usually digital data over telephone wires by modulating the data into an audio signal to send it and demodulating an audio signal into data to receive it.
Source: Dictionary.com
Mosaic
NCSA's browser (client) for the World-Wide Web.
Mosaic has been described as "the killer application of the 1990s" because it was the first program to provide a slick multimedia graphical user interface to the Internet's burgeoning wealth of distributed information services (formerly mostly limited to FTP and Gopher) at a time when access to the Internet was expanding rapidly outside its previous domain of academia and large industrial research institutions.
NCSA Mosaic was originally designed and programmed for the X Window System by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at NCSA. Version 1.0 was released in April 1993, followed by two maintenance releases during summer 1993. Version 2.0 was released in December 1993, along with version 1.0 releases for both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. An Acorn Archimedes port is underway (May 1994).
Marc Andreessen, who created the NCSA Mosaic research prototype as an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois left to start Mosaic Communications Corporation along with five other former students and staff of the university who were instrumental in NCSA Mosaic's design and development.
(ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/).
Source: Dictionary.com
MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)
Any of a set of standards established for the compression of digital video and audio data.
Source: Dictionary.com
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA) The birthplace of the first version of the Mosaic World-Wide Web browser.
Address: Urbana, IL, USA.
Home: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu.
Source: Dictionary.com
Netiquette
Etiquette practiced or advocated in electronic communication over a computer network.
Source: Dictionary.com
Netizen
A person who is a frequent or habitual user of the Internet.
Source: Dictionary.com
Network
A system of computers interconnected by telephone wires or other means in order to share information.
Source: Dictionary.com
Newbie
One that is new to something, especially a novice at using computer technology or the Internet.
Source: Dictionary.com
News Bots
Computer programs that customize portal sites with the information you're most interested in and sends you customized email with the latest updates depending on the way you answer a few questions. They're the simplest bots.
Newsgroup
An area on a computer network, especially the Internet, devoted to the discussion of a specified topic.
Source: Dictionary.com
Open Source
Term coined in March 1998 following the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in source under licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use, modify, and redistribute, the code. The intent was to be able to sell the hackers' ways of doing software to industry and the mainstream by avoid the negative connotations (to suits) of the term "free software". For discussion of the followon tactics and their consequences, see the Open Source Initiative (http://www.opensource.org) site.
Source: Dictionary.com
Operating System
Software designed to control the hardware of a specific data-processing system in order to allow users and application programs to make use of it.
Source: Dictionary.com
Opt-in
To purposefully accept some situation or condition ahead of time. For example, to opt-in to an e-mail campaign means that you want to receive periodic newsletters or information, which may include advertising from the publisher or third parties. An opt-in program implies that you can cancel the service, or "opt-out." A lot of spam is sent out under the guise that, at one point, you did opt-in for the program, which may or may not be true.
Source: TechWeb.com
Opt-out
To cancel some situation or condition.
Source: TechWeb.com
Page Views
A measure of the number of times an HTML file was requested from the server. Unlike hits, image files aren't counted. Unlike unique visitors or users, one person visiting the same page multiple times may be counted.
Password
A sequence of characters that one must input to gain access to a file, application, or computer system.
Source: Dictionary.com
Payment Gateway
An online system for real-time charging of credit cards when a customer places an order. Normally requires a merchant account.
PDF (Portable Document Format)
The native file format for Adobe Systems' Acrobat. PDF is the file format for representing documents in a manner that is independent of the original application software, hardware, and operating system used to create those documents. A PDF file can describe documents containing any combination of text, graphics, and images in a device-independent and resolution independent format. These documents can be one page or thousands of pages, very simple or extremely complex with a rich use of fonts, graphics, color, and images.
Home: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/adobepdf.html.
Source: Dictionary.com
Perl
A high-level programming language, started by Larry Wall in 1987 and developed as an open source project. It has an eclectic heritage, deriving from the ubiquitous {C} programming language and to a lesser extent from sed, awk, various Unix shell languages, Lisp, and at least a dozen other tools and languages. Originally developed for Unix, it is now available for many platforms.
The use of Perl has grown significantly since its adoption as the language of choice of many World-Wide Web developers. CGI interfaces and libraries for Perl exist for several platforms and Perl's speed and flexibility make it well suited for form processing and on-the-fly web page creation.
Perl programs are generally stored as text source files, which are compiled into virtual machine code at run time; this, in combination with its rich variety of data types and its common use as a glue language, makes Perl somewhat hard to classify as either a "scripting language" or an "applications language" -- see Ousterhout's dichotomy. Perl programs are usually called "Perl scripts", if only for historical reasons.
Home: http://www.perl.com.
Source: Dictionary.com
Pixel (PIX [picture] ELement)
The smallest addressable unit on a display screen. The higher the pixel resolution (the more rows and columns of pixels), the more information can be displayed.
Source: TechWeb.com
Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) Project
The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P), developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, is emerging as an industry standard providing a simple, automated way for users to gain more control over the use of personal information on Web sites they visit. At its most basic level, P3P is a standardized set of multiple-choice questions, covering all the major aspects of a Web site's privacy policies. Taken together, they present a clear snapshot of how a site handles personal information about its users. P3P-enabled Web sites make this information available in a standard, machine-readable format. P3P enabled browsers can "read" this snapshot automatically and compare it to the consumer's own set of privacy preferences. P3P enhances user control by putting privacy policies where users can find them, in a form users can understand, and, most importantly, enables users to act on what they see.
Home: http://www.w3.org/P3P/
Platform
The basic technology of a computer system's hardware and software that defines how a computer is operated and determines what other kinds of software can be used.
Source: Dictionary.com
Plug-in
A file containing data used to alter, enhance, or extend the operation of a parent application program. One of the first uses of this term was in Silicon Beach's SuperPaint application (late 1980s?) for the Macintosh. It had a Plug-ins folder containing different tools and effects.
The Netscape Navigator World-Wide Web browser supports plug-ins which display or interpret a particular file format or protocol such as Shockwave, RealAudio, Adobe Systems, Inc. PDF, Corel CMX (vector graphics). The file to be displayed is included in a web page using an EMBED HTML tag.
Plug-ins, both commercially and independently authored, can usually be downloaded for free and are stored locally. Plug-ins come in different versions specific to particular operating systems (Microsoft Windows 3.1, 3.2, and Macintosh are available).
Source: Dictionary.com
PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
PNG is an extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-color, grayscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel for transparency. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits per component (up to 48bit images for RGB, or 64bit for RGBA).
Home: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/
Portability
Relating to or being software that can run on two or more kinds of computers or with two or more kinds of operating systems.
Source: Dictionary.com
Portal
A web site that aims to be an entry point to the World-Wide Web, typically offering a search engine and/or links to useful pages, and possibly news or other services. These services are usually provided for free in the hope that users will make the site their default home page or at least visit it often. Popular examples are Yahoo and MSN. Most portals on the Internet exist to generate advertising income for their owners, others may be focused on a specific group of users and may be part of an intranet or extranet. Some may just concentrate on one particular subject, say technology or medicine, and are known as a vertical portals.
Source: Dictionary.com
Programming Language
A formal language in which computer programs are written. The definition of a particular language consists of both syntax (how the various symbols of the language may be combined) and semantics (the meaning of the language constructs).
Languages are classified as low level if they are close to machine code and high level if each language statement corresponds to many machine code instructions (though this could also apply to a low level language with extensive use of macros, in which case it would be debatable whether it still counted as low level). A roughly parallel classification is the description as first generation language through to fifth generation language.
The other major classification of languages distinguishes between imperative languages, procedural language and declarative languages.
Programming languages time-line/family tree.
Source: Dictionary.com
Protocol
A standard procedure for regulating data transmission between computers.
Source: Dictionary.com
Query
The words or phrase visitors use to search a database, such as a search engine.
Ranking
The placing your website gets when visitors conduct a search for your keywords or keyword phrases using a search engine.
Reach (Popularity)
The amount of different types of people who see an ad or message, including a website.
Reciprocal Link
A link you place on your webpage with the understanding that the linked webpage will create a link to your site.
See Also: Link Exchange
Referral Page
A webpage which links to your website and sends traffic. The URL will appear in your website's server logs, or in The Counter's analysis of your traffic. A good referral page can be worth more than a good search engine ranking, since it is likely to last longer.
Relational Database (RDBMS)
A database based on the relational model developed by E.F. Codd. A relational database allows the definition of data structures, storage and retrieval operations and integrity constraints. In such a database the data and relations between them are organised in tables. A table is a collection of rows or records and each row in a table contains the same fields. Certain fields may be designated as keys, which means that searches for specific values of that field will use indexing to speed them up.
Where fields in two different tables take values from the same set, a join operation can be performed to select related records in the two tables by matching values in those fields. Often, but not always, the fields will have the same name in both tables. For example, an "orders" table might contain (customer_id, product_code) pairs and a "products" table might contain (product_code, price) pairs so to calculate a given customer's bill you would sum the prices of all products ordered by that customer by joining on the product-code fields of the two tables. This can be extended to joining multiple tables on multiple fields. Because these relationships are only specified at retreival time, relational databases are classed as dynamic database management system.
The first commercial RDBMS was the Multics Relational Data Store, first sold in 1978.
INGRES, Oracle, Sybase, Inc., Microsoft Access, and Microsoft SQL Server are well-known database products and companies. Others include PostgreSQL, SQL/DS, and RDB.
Source: Dictionary.com
Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)
How much profit is generated per money spent on an advertising method.
Source: Overture.com
Return on Investment (ROI)
How much profit is generated per all money spent on a business.
Source: Overture.com
RSS (Rich Site Summary)
A family of document types (generally based on RDF) for listing updates to a site. RSS documents (generally called "RSS feeds") are readable with RSS readers (generally called "aggregators") like BottomFeeder, although, in 2003, it is anticipated that aggregator functions will be incorporated into web browsers and/or NNTP newsreaders.
Source: Dictionary.com
RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, an XML format for distributing news headlines on the Web, also known as syndication.
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
SVG is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML for the Web.
Home: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/
Search Engine
1) A software program that searches a database and gathers and reports information that contains or is related to specified terms.
2) A website whose primary function is providing a search engine for gathering and reporting information available on the Internet or a portion of the Internet.
Source: Dictionary.com
Secure Server
A Secure Server uses an SSL certificate. It is generally a piece of web space that can only be dealt with by using SSL ensuring that data transferred between the web space and the browser is encrypted.
Server Side Include (SSI)
The facility provided by most web servers, e.g. NCSA httpd, to replace special tags in an HTML file with the contents of another file before the file is sent out by the server, i.e. an HTML macro.
Source: Dictionary.com
Server
A program which provides some service to other (client) programs. The connection between client and server is normally by means of message passing, often over a network, and uses some protocol to encode the client's requests and the server's responses. The server may run continuously (as a daemon), waiting for requests to arrive or it may be invoked by some higher level daemon which controls a number of specific servers (inetd on Unix).
There are many servers associated with the Internet, such as those for HTTP, Network File System, Network Information Service (NIS), Domain Name System (DNS), FTP, news, finger, Network Time Protocol. On Unix, a long list can be found in /etc/services or in the NIS database "services".
Source: Dictionary.com
SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)
A generic markup language for representing documents. SGML is an International Standard that describes the relationship between a document's content and its structure. SGML allows document-based information to be shared and re-used across applications and computer platforms in an open, vendor-neutral format. SGML is sometimes compared to SQL, in that it enables companies to structure information in documents in an open fashion, so that it can be accessed or re-used by any SGML-aware application across multiple platforms.
Source: Dictionary.com
Shockwave
A 3D animation and interactive learning technology and format from Macromedia. Macromedia Director generates Shockwave files, which can be viewed through a Web browser plug-in (the Shockwave player) or multimedia applications that access the player directly. Shockwave is used to develop more sophisticated animations and interactions than Macromedia's Flash format. Shockwave uses the .DIR (DIRector) file extension for source files and .DCR extension for the Shockwave "movie" that is created and played.
Source: TechWeb.com
Shopping Cart
A piece of software installed on an online vendor's web site used to produce a shopping system. This generally means product pages, some sort of an online "basket" and a way for the customer to add, remove and modify product selections and to check out when they are done shopping.
SIMPLE
Short for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions, an application of the SIP protocol for server-to-server and client-to-server interoperability in instant messaging. SIMPLE is a step in bringing standardization to instant messaging.
Source: IntranetJournal.com
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)
A very simple text-based application-layer control protocol. It creates, modifies, and terminates sessions with one or more participants. Such sessions include Internet telephony and multimedia conferences.
Source: Dictionary.com
SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language)
The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, pronounced "smile") enables simple authoring of interactive audiovisual presentations. SMIL is typically used for "rich media"/multimedia presentations which integrate streaming audio and video with images, text or any other media type. SMIL is an easy-to-learn HTML-like language, and many SMIL presentations are written using a simple text-editor.
Home: http://www.w3.org/AudioVideo/
Software
The programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of the hardware and direct its operation.
Source: Dictionary.com
Spam
Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.
Source: Dictionary.com
SQL (Standard Query Language)
An industry-standard language for creating, updating and, querying relational database management systems.
SQL was developed by IBM in the 1970s for use in System R. It is the de facto standard as well as being an ISO and ANSI standard. It is often embedded in general purpose programming languages.
The first SQL standard, in 1986, provided basic language constructs for defining and manipulating tables of data; a revision in 1989 added language extensions for referential integrity and generalised integrity constraints. Another revision in 1992 provided facilities for schema manipulation and data administration, as well as substantial enhancements for data definition and data manipulation.
According to Allen G. Taylor, SQL does _not_ stand for "Structured Query Language". That, like "SEQUEL" (and its pronunciation /see'kw*l/), was just another unofficial name for a precursor of SQL. However, the IBM SQL Reference manual for DB2 and Craig Mullins's "DB2 Developer's Guide" say SQL _does_ stand for "Structured Query Language".
SQL Standards: http://www.jcc.com/SQLPages/jccs_sql.htm.
Source: Dictionary.com
SQL Server
A relational DBMS from Sybase and from Microsoft. Sybase introduced SQL Server in 1988 for various Unix versions. In that same year, with help from IBM, Sybase created an OS/2 version that Microsoft licensed and branded as Microsoft SQL Server. Sybase later ported the product to NT and NetWare, and Sybase and Microsoft sold the same version for NT under their own brand names for several years.
The partnership ended in 1994 with Version 4, and each company continued developing its version of the product separately. Microsoft SQL Server became Microsoft's flagship database software for Windows. In 1997, Sybase turned its version into Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise, which uses different data stores optimized for specific applications.
Source: TechWeb.com
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
A protocol designed by Netscape Communications Corporation to provide encrypted communications on the Internet. SSL is layered beneath application protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, Telnet, FTP, Gopher, and NNTP and is layered above the connection protocol TCP/IP. It is used by the HTTPS access method.
Source: Dictionary.com
Stemming
The ability of search engines to associate words with prefixes and suffixes to their word stem. If you have "design" on your website, the search engines with this ability will also associate "designer" and "designed" with your page.
Style Sheets
Style sheets describe how documents are presented on screens, in print, or perhaps how they are pronounced.
Supervisor Mode
An execution mode on some processors which enables execution of all instructions, including privileged instructions. It may also give access to different a address space, to memory management hardware and to other peripherals. This is the mode in which the operating system usually runs.
Source: Dictionary.com
System Software
Any software required to support the production or execution of application programs but which is not specific to any particular application.
System software typically includes an operating system to control the execution of other programs; user environment software such as a command-line interpreter, window system, desktop; development tools for building other programs such as assemblers, compilers, linkers, libraries, interpreters, cross-reference generators, version control, make; debugging, profiling and monitoring tools; utility programs, e.g. for sorting, printing, and editting.
Different people would classify some or all of the above system software as part of the operating system while others might say the operating system was just the kernel.
Source: Dictionary.com
Systems Analysis
Study of the design, specification, feasibility, cost, and implementation of a computer system for business. What a systems analyst does.
Source: Dictionary.com
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol)
A protocol for communication between computers, used as a standard for transmitting data over networks and as the basis for standard Internet protocols.
Source: Dictionary.com
Telnet
Often Telnet An Internet communications protocol that enables a computer to function as a terminal working from a remote computer.
Source: Dictionary.com
Terabyte
1000 GigaBytes.
Tracking URL
A URL that includes a tag designed to demonstrate the source of traffic to a Web site. For example: http://www.yoururl.com/?source=ecp
Unix
An interactive time-sharing operating system invented in 1969 by Ken Thompson after Bell Labs left the Multics project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of {C}, is considered a co-author of the system.
Source: Dictionary.com
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
An Internet address (for example, http://www.hmco.com/trade/), usually consisting of the access protocol (http), the domain name (www.hmco.com), and optionally the path to a file or resource residing on that server (trade).
Source: Dictionary.com
URL Redirection
When a web server tells the client browser to obtain a certain requested page from a different location. This is controlled by directives in the server's configuration files or a "Location: header output by a CGI script.
The web server stores all its documents in a directory tree rooted at some configured directory, known as its "document root". Normally the URI part of the URL (the part after the hostname) is used as a relative path from the document root to the desired file or directory. A redirect directive allows the server administrator to specify exceptions to this general mapping from URL to file name by telling the browser "try this URL instead". The new URL may be on the same server or a different one and may itself be subject to redirection.
The user is normally unaware of this process except that it may introduce extra delay while the browser sends the new request and the browser will usually display the new URL rather than the one the user originally requested.
Source: Dictionary.com
USENET
A messaging system that uses a computer network, especially the Internet, to transfer messages organized in thematic groups.
Source: Dictionary.com
User Mode
Opposite of supervisor mode.
Vector Graphics
In computer graphics, a technique for representing a picture as points, lines and other geometric entities. Vector graphics typically take up considerably less file space, because they are a mathematical representation of the elements of the image, rather than a matrix of pixels. All computer-aided design (CAD), drawing and diagramming programs create vector graphics formats.
Source: TechWeb.com
Virus
A program or piece of code written by a cracker that "infects" one or more other programs by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become Trojan horses. When these programs are executed, the embedded virus is executed too, thus propagating the "infection". This normally happens invisibly to the user.
A virus has an "engine" - code that enables it to propagate and optionally a "payload" - what it does apart from propagating. It needs a "host" - the particular hardware and software environment on which it can run and a "trigger" - the event that starts it running.
Unlike a worm, a virus cannot infect other computers without assistance. It is propagated by vectors such as humans trading programs with their friends. The virus may do nothing but propagate itself and then allow the program to run normally. Usually, however, after propagating silently for a while, it starts doing things like writing "cute" messages on the terminal or playing strange tricks with the display (some viruses include display hacks). Viruses written by particularly antisocial crackers may do irreversible damage, like deleting files.
By the 1990s, viruses had become a serious problem, especially among IBM PC and Macintosh users (the lack of security on these machines enables viruses to spread easily, even infecting the operating system). The production of special antivirus software has become an industry, and a number of exaggerated media reports have caused outbreaks of near hysteria among users. Many lusers tend to blame *everything* that doesn't work as they had expected on virus attacks. Accordingly, this sense of "virus" has passed into popular usage where it is often incorrectly used for a worm or Trojan horse.
Source: Dictionary.com
Visual Basic (VB)
A popular event-driven visual programming system from Microsoft Corporation for Microsoft Windows. VB is good for developing Windows interfaces, it invokes fragments of BASIC code when the user performs certain operations on graphical objects on-screen. It is widely used for in-house application program development and for prototyping. It can also be used to create ActiveX and COM components.
Home: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/.
Source: Dictionary.com
Visual Basic Script (VBScript)
Microsoft's scripting language which is an extension of their Visual Basic language. VBScript can be used with Microsoft Office applications and others. It can also be embedded in web pages but can only be understood by Internet Explorer.
Visual Basic is a BASIC variant with object-oriented features. Objects include applications, windows and selections.
Source: Dictionary.com
Visual C++
A {C} and C++ programming environment sold by Microsoft Corporation.
Source: Dictionary.com
VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)
A draft specification for the design and implementation of a platform-independent language for virtual reality scene description.
Source: Dictionary.com
WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers)
A distributed information retrieval system. WAIS is supported by Apple Computer, Thinking Machines and Dow Jones. Clients are able to retrieve documents using keywords. The search returns a list of documents, ranked according to the frequency of occurrence of the keyword(s) used in the search. The client can retrieve text or multimedia documents stored on the server. WAIS offers simple natural language input, indexed searching for fast retrieval, and a "relevance feedback" mechanism which allows the results of initial searches to influence future searches. It uses the ANSI Z39.50 service. Public domain implementations are available.
Source: Dictionary.com
WAN (Wide Area Network)
A communications network that uses such devices as telephone lines, satellite dishes, or radio waves to span a larger geographic area than can be covered by a LAN.
Source: Dictionary.com
Web Page
A document on the World Wide Web, consisting of an HTML file and any related files for scripts and graphics, and often hyperlinked to other documents on the Web.
Source: Dictionary.com
Web Server Logs
A file that lists actions that have occurred. For example, Web servers maintain log files listing every request made to the server. With log file analysis tools, it's possible to get a good idea of where visitors are coming from, how often they return, and how they navigate through a site. Using cookies enables Webmasters to log even more detailed information about how individual users are accessing site.
Source: Overture.com
Web Server
HTTP Server. A server process running at a web site which sends out web pages in response to HTTP requests from remote browsers.
If one site runs more than one server they must use different port numbers. Alternatively, several hostnames may be mapped to the same computer in which case they are known as "virtual servers".
Apache and NCSA HTTPd are two popular web servers. There are many others including some for practically every platform. Servers differ mostly in the "server-side" features they offer such as server-side include, and in their authentication and access control mechanisms. All decent servers support CGI and most have some binary API as well.
Source: Dictionary.com
Web Services
A family of standards promoted by the W3C for working with other business, developers and programs through open protocols, languages and APIs, including XML, Simple Object Access Protocol, WSDL and UDDI.
Source: Dictionary.com
Web Site
A set of interconnected webpages, usually including a homepage, generally located on the same server, and prepared and maintained as a collection of information by a person, group, or organization.
Source: Dictionary.com
WebDAV
WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers.
Source: WebDav.org
Windows NT
(Windows New Technology, NT) Microsoft's 32-bit operating system developed from what was originally intended to be OS/2 3.0 before Microsoft and IBM ceased joint development of OS/2. NT was designed for high end workstations (Windows NT 3.1), servers (Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server), and corporate networks (NT 4.0 Enterprise Server). The first release was Windows NT 3.1.
Unlike Windows 3.1, which was a graphical environment that ran on top of MS-DOS, Windows NT is a complete operating system. To the user it looks like Windows 3.1, but it has true multi-threading, built in networking, security, and memory protection.
It is based on a microkernel, with 32-bit addressing for up to 4Gb of RAM, virtualised hardware access to fully protect applications, installable file systems, such as FAT, HPFS and NTFS, built-in networking, multi-processor support, and C2 security.
NT is also designed to be hardware independent. Once the machine specific part - the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) - has been ported to a particular machine, the rest of the operating system should theorertically compile without alteration. A version of NT for DEC's Alpha machines was planned (September 1993).
NT needs a fast 386 or equivalent, at least 12MB of RAM (preferably 16MB) and at least 75MB of free disk space.
NT 4.0 was followed by Windows 2000.
Source: Dictionary.com
Workflow
The defined series of tasks within an organization to produce a final outcome. Sophisticated workgroup computing applications allow you to define different workflows for different types of jobs. At each stage in the workflow, one individual or group is responsible for a specific task. Once the task is complete, the workflow software ensures that the individuals responsible for the next task are notified and receive the data they need to execute their stage of the process. Workflow is built into most document management and content management systems so that content is approved before being posted to the Internet or intranet.
Source: IntranetJournal.com
World Wide Web
The complete set of documents or collection of internet sites residing on all Internet servers that use the HTTP protocol, accessible to users via a simple point-and-click system.
Source: Dictionary.com
WYSIWYG
Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is What You Get", as opposed to one that uses more-or-less obscure commands that do not result in immediate visual feedback. True WYSIWYG in environments supporting multiple fonts or graphics is a a rarely-attained ideal; there are variants of this term to express real-world manifestations including WYSIAWYG (What You See Is _Almost_ What You Get) and WYSIMOLWYG (What You See Is More or Less What You Get). All these can be mildly derogatory, as they are often used to refer to dumbed-down user-friendly interfaces targeted at non-programmers; a hacker has no fear of obscure commands (compare WYSIAYG). On the other hand, EMACS was one of the very first WYSIWYG editors, replacing (actually, at first overlaying) the extremely obscure, command-based TECO.
Source: Dictionary.com
XForms
Traditional HTML Web forms don't separate the purpose from the presentation of a form. XForms, in contrast, are comprised of separate sections that describe what the form does, and how the form looks. This allows for flexible presentation options, including classic XHTML forms, to be attached to an XML form definition.
Home: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/
XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language)
XHTML is a new, stricter and cleaner version of HTML and can be defined as an XML application. It is almost identical to HTML 4.01 and is aimed to replace HTML
Home: http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xhtml2-20040722/
XML (Extensible Markup Language))
A simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML. Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the World Wide Web and elsewhere.
Home: http://www.w3.org/XML/
XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language Family)
XSL is a language for expressing style sheets. An XSL style sheet is, like with CSS, a file that describes how to display an XML document of a given type. XSL shares the functionality and is compatible with CSS2 (although it uses a different syntax). It also adds:
1) A transformation language for XML documents: XSLT. Originally intended to perform complex styling operations, like the generation of tables of contents and indexes, it is now used as a general purpose XML processing language. XSLT is thus widely used for purposes other than XSL, like generating HTML web pages from XML data.
2) Advanced styling features, expressed by an XML document type which defines a set of elements called Formatting Objects, and attributes (in part borrowed from CSS2 properties and adding more complex ones.
Home: http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/
Zip
To create a compressed archive (a "zip file") from one or more files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its use is spreading from MS-DOS now that portable implementations of the algorithm have been written.
Source: Dictionary.com
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