The Age of Surfing and LOL
The Confusing Terms of This digital Age
If you are confused by many terms used when talking about technology, using technology, or talking to a younger generation… you are not alone. The fast-paced era we are now involved in is very hard to keep up with. It is very easy to get annoyed with these things and just shut down from learning anything new and unfamiliar. For this very reason, we have taken some time to create a list of these new age Techie Terms so you are easily brought up to speed… for at least the next day or so 🙂
Techie Terms
Chat Room
A Chat Room is an on-line service that allows users to communicate with each other about an agreed-upon topic in “real time” as opposed to delayed time, as with e-mail.
Search Engine
Search Engine is a program that performs keyword searches for information on the Internet.
Surfing
Surfing is the act of browsing through the Internet looking for topics or groups of personal interest.
Download
Download means to copy a file from one computer system to another. From the Internet user’s point of view, to download a file is to request it from another computer (or from a Web page on another computer) and to receive it.
Email
Email refers to a way of sending messages electronically from one computer to another, generally through a modem and telephone line connected to a computer.
The Internet
The Internet is a worldwide collection of computer networks that allows people to find and use information and communicate with others.
Netiquette
Netiquette refers to social rules of decorum for interacting with others on-line.
Lol
lol is a term used when wanting to symbolize laughter in a sentence. It is an abbreviation for “Laughing Out Loud”.
Rofl
rofl is a term used when wanting to symbolize an overabundance of laughter in a sentence. It is an abbreviation for “Rolling On Floor Laughing”.
Cookies
A funny name for a noun that describes a small piece of information about you (about your computer, actually). It is a small file that a Web server automatically sends to your PC when you browse certain Web sites. Cookies are stored as text files on your hard drive so servers can access them when you return to Web sites you’ve visited before.
Cookies contain information that identifies each user, for example: login or username, passwords, shopping cart information, preferences, and so on. When a user revisits a Web site, his or her computer automatically “serves up” the cookie, which establishes the user’s identity, thus eliminating the need for the customer to reenter the information. The server needs to know this information in order for the Web site to work correctly, and the information is nothing more than a string of letters and numbers.
Navigate
The act of moving around the Web by clicking on hypertext links (or paths) that take you from one Web page to another. As you navigate, you move from one computer to another and from one server to another without realizing it.
PDFing
An example of a word morphing, this term once described the process of turning a document into an Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) file. Now modern slang uses it as a mild curse word, as in: “Where’s that PDFing document! I had it right here.”
RAM
RAM is an acronym for read-only memory, which is just telling you that it is memory that you cannot write, or save, information to. When it comes to RAM numbers and speed, you’ll find that most new computers on the market (and here we’re talking about PCs) will generally have a RAM speed of anywhere from 3GB to 8GB.
Processor
The processor in a computer basically the brains of the entire machine. Even going back to the beginning of computers, they had processors – which, when you think about the definition of the word in general, means it is what is processing, or thinking about, the tasks that you are doing.
Hard Drive
By now, most people know that a hard drive is the storage capacity for a computer. Built into computers, the lowest you’ll probably see in a computer these days is about 250GB. This storage would be enough for hundreds to thousands of mp3 music files, photographs, video files, documents, and more. But, even with that being a rather large amount of space for storage, that is about the lowest you’ll see these days. Computers even in the low-to-mid range generally have at least 320GB, and it only goes up from there. It is not uncommon to see 500, 640, 750, or even 1000GB computers. A computer with 1000GB of storage will generally say 1TB, which is a terabyte.
LCD
LCD is a term used to describe a type of computer or television screen. It stands for “Liquid Crystal Display”.
URL
This is an abbreviation for “Uniform Resource Locator”. This basically stands for Web address. For example this websites address is: www.arta.org
USB or USB Stick
This is an abbreviation for “Universal Serial Bus”. This is basically a small personal moveable device(hard drive) that has a certain amount of memory on it. You can plug it into a computer and save files onto it quickly and easily, then unplug it and bring those files with you. It is basically an electronic backpack or briefcase.
Wi-Fi
This is term used for wireless Internet. This means your device can connect to the Internet via a wireless signal. Most often you will hear it used when talking about Wireless Hotspots. These are basically spots where you can gain access to free wireless Internet. Most common ones are located in coffee shops.
THANK YOU FOR READING – ARTA Blog Supervisor