Definition: "Adware" is software that serves banner ads or pop-up ads to you while in use. Frequently installed without user's knowledge. In addition to downloading ads, it may also upload user information collected without explicit permission. This type of adware is called "spyware".
Also Known As: spamware
Alternate Spellings: ad-ware
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Definition: "antivirus" is protective software designed to defend your computer against malicious software. Malicious software, or "malware" includes: viruses, Trojans, keyloggers, hijackers, dialers, and other code that vandalizes or steals your computer contents. In order to be an effective defense, your antivirus software needs to run in the background at all times, and should be kept updated so it recognizes new versions of malicious software.
Also Known As: anti-virus, anti virus
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Definition: A file attached to an email message as an enclosure. It sends as a duplicate of the original file, and is a superior alternative to faxing. It can be of any type of software file, and can be opened by the receiver if that person has the appropriate software to view the file attachment.
File attachments are cousins to "downloaded" and "uploaded" files. The main difference is that attachments are shipped to a specific receiver via email, while downloads and uploads are less discriminating with whom they convey files to.
Also Known As: "File attachment" or "enclosure"
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A blog (a contraction of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs. With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.
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Definition: "Cache" is a specialized form of computer memory. In the case of Internet, "cache" is commonly used in the context of "browser cache". Cache is designed to speed up the computer by prioritizing its contents for quick access.
How it works: cache holds copies of recently accessed data such as a web page and pictures on web pages. It keeps this data ready to "swap" onto your screen within fractions of a second. So, instead of requiring your computer to go to the original web page and photos in Denmark, the cache simply offers you the lastest copy from your own hard drive.
This caching-and-swapping speeds up page wieving because the next time you request that page, it is accessed from the cache on your computer instead of from the distant Web server.
Note: the browser cache should be emptied periodically.
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| Content Management System (CMS) |
A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content.
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Domain Name System, or DNS, is the most recognized system for assigning addresses to internet web servers (aka "internet hosts"). Somewhat like international phone numbers, the domain name system helps to give every internet server a memorable and easy-to-spell address. Simultaneously, the domain names keep the really technical IP address invisible for most viewers..
Some example internet domain names:
- about.com
- nytimes.com
- navy.mil
- harvard.edu
- monster.ca
- wikipedia.org
- japantimes.co.jp
- dublin.ie
- gamesindustry.biz
- spain.info
- sourceforge.net
- wikipedia.org
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Definition: To transfer files or data from one computer to another.To download means to receive; to upload means to transmit.
Note: downloading files from the Internet is a controversial activity. It is very easy to find and download illegal and copyright-infringing files through the Internet.
Also Known As: "get"; "take"; "FTP"
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Definition: An "emotional icon", or "emoticon"" for short. Also known as "smiley".
These specialized combinations of characters are a digital culture form of expression. Emoticons enable you to convey emotion through online messaging.
Represented as a sequence of printable characters, or a small image, smileys (also spelled "smileys") are intended to show the facial expression and convey an emotion of the sender of the message. Widely used in chat rooms, online forums, and email.
Examples: :-) :-( ;-) :-* :-/
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Definition: A "firewall" is an over-arching term to describe a specialized defense system for a computer network. The term comes from construction, where specialized fire-prevention systems involve fire-resistant walls being placed strategically in buildings and cars to slow the spread of a fire. In the case of computers, the term describes hardware or software that slows the invasion of a computer system by blocking viruses and hackers.
A computer firewall itself can take hundreds of different forms. It can be a specialized software program, or a specialized physical hardware device, or often a combination of both. Its ultimate job is to block unauthorized and unwanted traffic from getting into a computer system.
Having a firewall at home is smart. You may choose to employ a software firewall like "Zone Alarm@. You may also choose to install a hardware firewall "router", or use a combination of both hardware and software.
Examples of the software-only firewall: Zone Alarm, Sygate, Kerio.
Examples of a hardware firewall: Linksys, D-Link, Netgear.
Note: makers of some popular antivirus programs also offer software firewall as one security suite.
Example: AVG Anti-Virus plus Firewall Edition.
Also Known As: "sacrificial lamb server", "sniper", "watchdog", "sentry"
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Flash is streaming animation for web pages. Sometimes Flash is a portion of an html web page, and sometimes a web page is made entirely of Flash. Either way, Flash files are called "Flash movies". These are special .swf format files that beam to your web browser screen as you watch them.
Flash requires a special free plugin (modification) to your browser before you can view Flash movies.
Flash movies offer two very special web browsing experiences: very fast loading, and vector animation with interactivity:
- Flash benefit #1: very fast loading to your screen
Unlike file attachments in email, which you must wait to fully download before viewing, Flash movies start playing as the content is transmitted to you. While the Flash movie may be 6 megabytes large, you can start to watch the animation within moments, while the rest "streams" to your screen in the background. This makes Flash very desirable for web publishers, as it opens creative doors for them to make very powerful animations for their readers.
- Flash benefit #2: vector graphic animation
"Vector graphics" are different from "raster graphics" (jpg, gif, png, bmp graphics). Vector graphics use math formulas to draw animation shapes, while raster graphics save millions of tiny colored dots to draw photos. This difference allows vector graphics to be very small file size, and very crisp at any resized format. For these two benefits, Flash designers use vector graphics to make powerful web page visuals that load to your screen very quickly and crisply.
There are three downsides to Flash animation:
- Downside #1: Some organizations block Flash movies from being received through the Internet. While this is partly motivated by fears of Flash viruses and Flash hackers, the greater motivation is disciplining staff. Many managers of private companies do not want their employees playing Flash games at their office computers, so they will ban Flash movies at work through technical blockers on the network. Do not be surprised if your employer chooses to implement a ban of Flash at your office.
- Downside #2: Not everyone has the required Flash Player plugin. Because they do not like "blinking things" on their screens, some users choose to disable or not install Flash Player.
- Downside #3: Flash .swf movies can be very time consuming to edit. It is very laborious work to change a Flash web page quickly. For this reason, you will almost never see a dynamic content page like a news site utilizing Flash for its rapidly-changing content. Instead, Flash is used more for decorative purposes, and for advertising and online gaming purposes.
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Originally, a "hacker" was someone who illegally and unethically broke into other people's computers and networks. And indeed, that original 1980's definition still applies today in the 21st century. However, the term "hacker" (also spelled creatively as "haxor" and "Hax0r") now has multiple sub-meanings.
General meaning: hacker = lawbreaker
A hacker/haxor/Hax0r is a gifted but unethical computer user who breaks into computers and networks, usually to perform theft or digital vandalism. This is the classic definition of a hacker, and describes those computer users who willfully seek to destroy or steal from other people's networks.
Academic meaning: hacker = creative artist
An "academic hacker" is not interested in vandalizing or stealing, but rather in creating clever programs and beautiful interfaces. Often, an academic hacker will take existing programmatic code, and improve upon it through clever alterations and additions. Their "hacking" is about obsessively innovating computer code to perform something more beautifully or more efficiently. Academic hackers, in general, are harmless and do not seek to hurt other people's networks.
Computer Security meaning: hacker = security technician
Not unlike a store security guard who is a former convict, a computer security hacker is a talented user who is employed in helping to protect computer networks. You will hear the term "ethical hacker" to describe these types of professionals. While they themselves may not be completely ethical, these professionals perform very technical security work in exchange for money. It is not surprising to see ethical hackers spending their paychecks on very expensive personal computers in their personal lives, so they can play online games after work. As long as they have a good paying job to support their personal habits, a computer security hacker is usually not motivated to destroy nor steal from their employer.
Hobby Computer meaning: hacker = tinkerer
There are many "hobby hackers" out there. These are users who like to disassemble and modify their own computers for hobby pleasure. Many hobby hackers are gamers who want to extract even more performance from their gaming computers. These individuals will often spend thousands of dollars on custom computer cases and liquid cooling modifications. But hobby hackers also like to do small "white collar crimes", like downloading pirated movies and music. By this definition, yes, millions of p2p downloaders are hobby hackers. And indeed, if you have ever modified your router and firewall to allow faster p2p downloads, you could describe yourself as a hobby hacker. Gratefully, only a small percentage of hobby hackers ever escalate into becoming unethical hackers.
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HTTP stands for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol", which is a communications protocol used to transfer information between computers on the Internet. This is how you can view and interact with many websites on the Internet, and explains why lots of web site addresses begin with "http".
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I-CMS enables authorised users the facility to update and edit content on pages. I-CMS is fully integrated into the website and requires no special software to be installed on the user’s PC.
I-CMS has been specifically designed to be intuitive in its editing mode so that non-technical users can update site content easily. The overall webpage template appears the same throughout and the page to be edited is located using the ordinary website menu. While editing, the content of the page stays in the same place and looks the same as on the actual website. Any changes are immediately reflected in the formatting. Sequencing of the menu is achieved automatically or by dragging and dropping items on a graphical representation of the menu.
The ethos behind the design for our I-CMS is to make the editing and addition of pages an easy and obvious process. When logged in as an editor the normal website menu can be used simply to navigate to any page and then edit content in place on the webpage with word-processor style controls. Adding, copying or deleting pages is just as easy because I-CMS provides a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor which displays website content exactly as it appears on the site, while it is being edited.
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IP address, or "internet protocol address", is a unique identifying number given to every single computer on the internet. Like a car license plate, an IP address is a special serial number used for identification.
Tech point: an IP address is different from a domain name address or a MAC (media access control) address.
Any machine connected to the internet has an IP address: Xbox games, cell phones, fax machines, and even soda pop dispensers have IP addresses. In every case, the IP address acts both like a car license plate and like a telephone number: it shows ownership, allows the machine to be located by other machines, and empowers authorities to track and protect people's safety, if need be.
How IP addresses look:
IP addresses are comprised of four numbers separated by dots:
- e.g. 127.0.0.1
- e.g. 253.16.44.22
- e.g. 72.48.108.101
IP addresses use the above dotted-number format called "dotted quad". Each of the four parts of a dotted quad can be no larger than 256, for a worldwide maximum of 4.3 billion different IP addresses.
IP address is not the same as www domain name addresses:
For nearly every web server, the IP address is invisibly translated into a natural English "domain name" for ease of use. But technically speaking, the IP address is the true identifier of a web server...the domain name is simply a redirector pointer to help people find the web server.
Here are three IP addresses, with their corresponding domain names. Both the IP address and domain name URL can be used to connect to the same web server:
- e.g. 72.246.51.15 = www.nasa.gov
- e.g. 152.91.56.138 = www.gov.au
- e.g. 208.185.127.40 = www.about.com
Your ISP has a block of IP addresses to lend:
Internet authorites allot IP address numbers to regional internet service providers in large blocks. Those ISP's, in turn, assign these IP addresses to every server and every user internet user who logs onto the internet. Yes, there are millions of IP addresses active at any instant.
More about IP addresses:
- Trivia point 1: before the World Wide Web became popular in the 1990's, every computer was assigned a fixed ("static" IP address). But with so many millions of internet users today, ISP's now choose to "lend" IP addresses from a pool of numbers. This is much like dealer license plates being shared amongst test drive vehicles at a car dealership. This loaning of IP addresses is called "dynamic IP addressing", and is proven to work better for individual users.
- Trivia point 2: often, it is possible to identify where a user is in the world by their IP address. Web sites like www.whatismyipaddress.com/ can read your computer's IP address, compare it to its database of ISP's, and attempt to guess your location on the planet.
- Trivia point 3: it is possible to mask or digitally alter the appearance of your computer's IP address. You would do this for the sake of privacy or to avoid authorities tracking your online habits.
- Trivia point 4: within office networks, each office computer is given an "internal IP address". As soon as an office computer accesses the internet, it then borrows the office's main IP address. This works much like office telephone numbers: a unique internal extension number is assigned to every user, but as soon as any person dials out of the office, call display will only show the office's main phone number. This is known as internal vs. external IP addressing, and is a necessary technique to reduce the number of IP addresses on the internet.
- Trivia point 5: as of May 2008, the internet uses IP addressing standard Version 4 (aka "IPv4"). There is a new generation of addresses being designed called IPv6. The biggest change is in the number of available addresses. Instead of 4.3 billion possible IP addresses, IPv6 will bring us 34,000,000,000,000,000,000 billion possible IP addresses.
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Multimedia is media that utilizes a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun (a medium with multiple content forms) or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which only utilize traditional forms of printed or hand-produced text and still graphics. In general, multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content forms.
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A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
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| Really Simple Syndication (RSS) |
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.
The benefit of RSS is the aggregation of content from multiple Web sources in one place. RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader" or an "aggregator", which can be web-based or desktop-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.
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A server is a computer that is specifically configured to carry out a certain task. There are many different kinds of servers:
- Application server, a server dedicated to running certain software applications
- Communications server, carrier-grade computing platform for communications networks
- Database server, provides a central location for storing and managing databases
- Proxy server, provides database IT server in services
- Fax server, provides fax services for clients
- File server, where files on an office network may be stored (e.g. for backup purposes)
- Print server, a computer designed to have one or more printers connected to it and receive requests to print to them from other machines
- Game server, a server that video game clients connect to in order to play online together
- Web server, a server where web sites are commonly stored, supporting the HTTP protocol.
- Web Feed Server, a server that distributes, manages, and tracks internal and external RSS feeds in an enterprise
- Client-server, a software architecture that separates "server" functions from "client" functions
- Catalog server, a central search point for information across a distributed network
Whenever we at Digital Umbrella refer to a server (or, inparticular, our server) we are referring to a web server where our websites are stored and accessed by the client and by visitors and guests.
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"Web 2.0" is a techno-culture expression that started in 2004. A phrase that was born at an O'Reilly Media conference, "Web 2.0" describes that the world wide web has evolved into a buffet of online software services, with your web browser as the software interface. Essentially, "Web 2.0" means that the web is not just a massive collection of brochures...the web is also a gigantic store of ASP remote-access software.
Web 2.0 offers many remote software choices. Here are just a few examples of Web 2.0:
- web-based email
- online banking
- project management tools
- word processing
- spreadsheeting
- news feeds
- online radio
- video hosting
- geomatics and mapping services
- car anti-theft tracking and gps
- home security surveillance
- dating and relationships services
- psychology and medical counselling
- headhunting and executive job searching
- sports team organizing
- photo gallery services
- music and file sharing
- computer virus scanning
- computer hardware testing
- private investigator and confidential search services
- wedding planning
- consignment and flea market trading (e.g. eBay)
- price shopping for consumer goods
- digital photo processing
- logo design and graphic arts services
All of these services, and many more, are now available online through the web. Some of these services are free (powered by advertising), while others cost subscription fees ranging from 5 dollars per month to 5000 dollars per year.
How Web 1.0 Started:
Originally, "Web 1.0" started in 1989 as a broadcast medium for graphical academic documents, and it quickly diverged from there. The web caught fire as a forum for free public broadcasting. Web readership grew exponentially during the Clinton administration, because starting in 1990, American news hyped the world wide web as "The Information Superhighway". Millions of Americans, and then the rest of the world, jumped on Web 1.0 as the modern way to receive information about the world.
Web 1.0 continued its outrageous growth pattern until 2001, when, suddenly, the "Dot Com bubble burst". It burst because many internet startup companies could not live up to the multimillion-dollar expectations of profit. Thousands of people lost their jobs as investors discovered that web users were reluctant to move their consumer spending onto the internet. People just didn't trust the web enough to do big spending online, and many dot com companies had to close down accordingly. The frantic web growth suddenly slowed.
Web 1.0 just got itself a big black eye, and was about to suffer an economic hangover from 2001 to 2004. The original frantic investor base left the digital world, and Web 1.0 settled into being a brochure-based broadcast medium that focused more on information than on software services.
Web 2.0: the Dot Com World Healed Itself:
In 2004, the economic hangover ended, and the world wide web began a new upturn. As more sober investors and more mature technology architects saw other ways to approach web business, things changed. Web 2.0 began, with a new second objective that went beyond broadcasting static brochures.
As Web 2.0, the world wide web has also become a medium for online software services. Now more than just neat animations and company profiles, the web is also a universal channel where people can access remote software right through a web browser. Spreadsheeting, word processing, private investigator services, wedding planning, web-based email, project management, headhunting, movie and file sharing, graphic design services, car tracking and gps, ... all of these online software choices can be found via a web browser.
Indeed, while the web also remains a venue for brochures and general information about the world, it is now also a medium for tools and computer services. We are not sure what "Web 3.0" will be, but until then, get used to seeing more and more online services in this age of Web 2.0.
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A Web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext links.
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A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranets and Knowledge Management systems. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".
Example: www.wikipedia.org
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WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed during editing appears very similar to the final output, which might be a printed document, web page, slide presentation or even the lighting for a theatrical event.
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