Terminology


 

Reference Used for Terminology (unless otherwise indicated):  Dictionary.com

If you don't find the word you're looking for here, check out The Social Media Guide.


application   

A computer program with an interface, enabling people to use the computer as a tool to accomplish a specific task. Word processing, spreadsheet, and communications software are all examples of applications. 


augmented reality 


 

blog

An online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called Weblog, Web log


Cloud computing-From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

          Cloud computing logical diagram

 

Cloud computing is Internet- ("cloud-") based development and use of computer technology ("computing").[1] In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.[2] Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption and delivery model for IT services based on Internet, and it typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.[3][4]

The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents.[5] Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online which are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.

These applications are broadly divided into the following categories: Software as a Service (SaaS), Utility Computing, Web Services, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Managed Service Providers (MSP), Service Commerce, and Internet Integration. The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that is often used to represent the Internet in flow charts and diagrams.[6]


css

From TechTerms.com, CSS "stands for "Cascading Style Sheet." Cascading style sheets are used to format the layout of Web pages. They can be used to define text styles, table sizes, and other aspects of Web pages that previously could only be defined in a page's HTML.


digital

Computer Science Representing or operating on data or information in numerical form. A digital clock uses a series of changing digits to represent time at discrete intervals, for example, every second. Modern computers rely on digital processing techniques, in which both data and the instructions for manipulating data are represented as binary numbers. Compare analog.

Available in electronic form; readable and manipulable by computer.


digital footprint

According to Tip-The Innovative Parent, in the article Digital Footprints...(March 25, 2008), "There are two different types of digital footprints: Active and Passive. Passive footprints are not created deliberately by the user. This is information uploaded to the internet by way of companies providing public information. An active digital footprint is very different. It is the deliberate creation of this footprint. Facebook and MySpace are perfect examples of this. Bloggers write about their daily activities, include photos and movies to carve out their prints."


embed code

It is a code used to plug a document such as a picture, song or video into another document such as a forum, or a website like Answerbag.

EDIT:

To embed a video, copy and paste the embed code from the source

To embed a picture, find the picture you're looking for on the Internet, copy and paste the link on the address bar (it should end in .jpg). It will look something like:

http:*//www*.ethlife.ethz.ch/i mages/cern_1990-l.jpg <examplepic


hacker

A microcomputer user who attempts to gain unauthorized access to proprietary computer systems.


hardware

Computers. the mechanical, magnetic, electronic, and electrical devices comprising a computer system, as the CPU, disk drives, keyboard, or screen.

 

The physical, touchable, material parts of a computer or other system. The term is used to distinguish these fixed parts of a system from the more changable software or data components which it executes, stores, or carries.

Computer hardware typically consists chiefly of electronic devices (CPU, memory, display) with some electromechanical parts (keyboard, printer, disk drives, tape drives, loudspeakers) for input, output, and storage, though completely non-electronic (mechanical, electromechanical, hydraulic, biological) computers have also been conceived of and built.


Internet

The global communication network that allows almost all computers worldwide to connect and exchange information. Some of the early impetus for such a network came from the U.S. government network Arpanet, starting in the 1960s.

Note: Some scholars have argued that the access to massive amounts of information, together with the widespread ability to communicate, has altered the way that human beings perceive reality.

The mother of all networks. First incarnated beginning in 1969 as the ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense research testbed. Though it has been widely believed that the goal was to develop a network architecture for military command-and-control that could survive disruptions up to and including nuclear war, this is a myth; in fact, ARPANET was conceived from the start as a way to get most economical use out of then-scarce large-computer resources.

As originally imagined, ARPANET's major use would have been to support what is now called remote login and more sophisticated forms of distributed computing, but the infant technology of electronic mail quickly grew to dominate actual usage. Universities, research labs and defense contractors early discovered the Internet's potential as a medium of communication between _humans_ and linked up in steadily increasing numbers, connecting together a quirky mix of academics, techies, hippies, SF fans, hackers, and anarchists. The roots of this lexicon lie in those early years.

Over the next quarter-century the Internet evolved in many ways. The typical machine/OS combination moved from DEC PDP-10s and PDP-20s, running TOPS-10 and TOPS-20, to PDP-11s and VAXes and Suns running Unix, and in the 1990s to Unix on Intel microcomputers. The Internet's protocols grew more capable, most notably in the move from NCP/IP to TCP/IP in 1982 and the implementation of Domain Name Service in 1983. It was around this time that people began referring to the collection of interconnected networks with ARPANET at its core as "the Internet".

The ARPANET had a fairly strict set of participation guidelines - connected institutions had to be involved with a DOD-related research project. By the mid-80s, many of the organizations clamoring to join didn't fit this profile. In 1986, the National Science Foundation built NSFnet to open up access to its five regional supercomputing centers; NSFnet became the backbone of the Internet, replacing the original ARPANET pipes (which were formally shut down in 1990). Between 1990 and late 1994 the pieces of NSFnet were sold to major telecommunications companies until the Internet backbone had gone completely commercial.

That year, 1994, was also the year the mainstream culture discovered the Internet. Once again, the killer app was not the anticipated one - rather, what caught the public imagination was the hypertext and multimedia features of the World Wide Web. Subsequently the Internet has seen off its only serious challenger (the OSI protocol stack favored by European telecom monopolies) and is in the process of absorbing into itself many of the proprietary networks built during the second wave of wide-area networking after 1980. It is now (1996) a commonplace even in mainstream media to predict that a globally-extended Internet will become the key unifying communications technology of the next century. See also the network and Internet address.

Internet 

1986, "the linked computer networks of the U.S. Defense Department," shortened from internetwork, from inter- + network.

interface

Equipment or programs designed to communicate information from one system of computing devices or programs to another.

Usage Note: The noun interface has been around since the 1880s, meaning "a surface forming a common boundary, as between bodies or regions." But the word did not really take off until the 1960s, when it began to be used in the computer industry to designate the point of interaction between a computer and another system, such as a printer. The word was applied to other interactions as well—between departments in an organization, for example, or between fields of study. Shortly thereafter interface developed a use as a verb, but it never really caught on outside its niche in the computer world, where it still thrives. The Usage Panel has been unable to muster much enthusiasm for the verb. Thirty-seven percent of Panelists accept it when it designates the interaction between people in the sentence The managing editor must interface with a variety of freelance editors and proofreaders. But the percentage drops to 22 when the interaction is between a corporation and the public or between various communities in a city. Many Panelists complain that interface is pretentious and jargony. Certainly, it has no shortage of acceptable synonyms; cooperate, deal, exchange information, interact, and work present themselves as ready substitutes.


learning

"Learning is formal when someone other than the learner sets curriculum. Typically, it’s an event, on a schedule and completion is generally recognized with a symbol, such as a grade, gold star, certificate or check mark in a learning management system. Formal learning is pushed on learners.

By contrast, informal learners usually set their own learning objectives. They learn when they feel a need to know. The proof of their learning is their ability to do something they could not do before. Informal learning often is a pastiche of small chunks of observing how others do things, asking questions, trial and error, sharing stories with others and casual conversation. Learners are pulled to informal learning."

Source: Informal Learning 2.0, Jay Cross, Internet Time blog, 8 August 2009


link

An object, as text or graphics, linked through hypertext to a document, another object, etc.


mash-up

An audio recording that is a composite of samples from other recordings, usually from different musical styles.

According to Wikipedia, in web development, a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service.


netiquette

The rules of etiquette that apply when communicating over computer networks, esp. the Internet.


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.

 

A method and philosophy for software licensing and distribution designed to encourage use and improvement of software written by volunteers by ensuring that anyone can copy the source code and modify it freely.

The term "open source" is now more widely used than the earlier term "free software" (promoted by the Free Software Foundation) but has broadly the same meaning - free of distribution restrictions, not necessarily free of charge.

There are various open source licenses available. Programmers can choose an appropriate license to use when distributing their programs.

The Open Source Initiative promotes the Open Source Definition.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar. was a seminal paper describing the open source phenomenon.

Open Sources - O'Reilly book with full text online.

Articles from ZDNet.

(1999-12-29)

 

A social movement, begun by computer programmers, that rejects secrecy and centralized control of creative work in favor of decentralization, transparency, and unrestricted ("open") sharing of information. Source refers to the human-readable source code of computer programs, as opposed to the compiled computer programming language instructions, or object code, that run on computers but cannot be easily understood or modified by people.


podcast

Web-based audio broadcast via an RSS feed, accessed by subscription over the Internet


program

A set of coded instructions that enables a machine, especially a computer, to perform a desired sequence of operations.


platform      

The basic technology of a computer system's hardware and software, defining how a computer is operated and determining what other kinds of software can be used. Additional software or hardware must be compatible with the platform. 


protocol

Computer Science A standard procedure for regulating data transmission between computers.


RSS

A way to subscribe to websites and save time on the Web


 

social media

Social media are online communications in which individuals shift fluidly and flexibly between the role of audience and author. To do this, they use social software that enables anyone without knowledge of coding, to post, comment on, share or mash up content and to form communities around shared interests.

(Joseph Thornley)


 

software   

The programs and instructions that run a computer, as opposed to the actual physical machinery and devices that compose the hardware.


tag

According to About.com, tag is a keyword used to describe an article or website. Tags are often used in social bookmarking, social news and blog entries to help users search for relevant content.  For example, a blog entry on the Green Bay Packers might be given the tags of "blog" , "Green Bay" , "Packers" , and "football".

Tag can also be used as a verb, as in tagging a blog entry or searching for articles tagged with "sports".


tag cloud

A tag cloud is a box containing a list of tags with the most prominent or popular tags receiving a darker and bigger font than less popular tags. (About.com)

A tag cloud is a set of related tags with corresponding weights. Typical tag clouds have between 30 and 150 tags. The weights are represented using font sizes or other visual clues...frequently, tag clouds are interactive: tags are hyperlinks typically allowing the user to drill down on the data. (tagclouds.com)


TED

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader.  For more information, see http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/5


URL

An abbreviation for Universal Resource Locator, a title that refers to the formal address of a document on the Internet.


web

Short for the World Wide Web.

The word Web is usually capitalized when referring to the World Wide Web: Many sites on the Web have information about used cars. In this use, however, the word is increasingly found lowercase, and this usage may become dominant. See Usage Note at website.


web 2.0

The second generation of the World Wide Web in which content is user-generated and dynamic, and software is offered that mimics desktop programs

Web 2.0 encourages collaboration and communication between users.


widget

A program that performs some simple function, such as providing a weather report or stock quote, and can be accessed from a computer desktop, webpage, mobile phone or subscription television service.


wifi

noun  a local area network that uses high frequency radio signals to transmit and receive data over distances of a few hundred feet; uses ethernet protocol [syn: wireless local area network]

According to Kathleen Crislip at About.com, "Wifi" means "wireless fidelity". The term "wifi" refers to certain kinds of wireless local area networks, or WLAN (as opposed to LAN, or computers that are networked together with wires).

Travelers with PDA's (like Blackberries) and other handheld devices or laptops with wireless cards can connect to the internet via wifi. A wireless card is like a modem without a phone line (like an airport card in a Mac).


wiki

A collaborative website whose content can be edited by anyone who has access to it. The world's most famous wiki is Wikipedia.


World Wide Web

A system of extensively interlinked hypertext documents: a branch of the Internet. Abbreviation: WWW