SPlog

Do you have a zombie in your house? Do you know what a real MAN is? Are you tired of seeing gobbledydook on your computer? Do gremlins get on your nerves? Are you a gearhead? You probably are if you office looks like a geekosphere.

For my Technical Writing course, we had an assignment to go on a certain website and learn the meanings of 10 words that were new to us.

I decided to post my 10 words with the definition, and my comments on them. I hope you enjoy.

#1 m-commerce (digital commerce)

Definition: A form of e-commerce that deals in the fees a company collects for licensing, advertising, or selling subscriptions to the content or services offered on mobile devices. With the popularity of cell phones and PDAs, portable devices such as these are becoming Web-enabled through wireless networks and WAP. M-commerce is considered a form of e-commerce (just as d-commerce is) because it has to do with monies generated for a product or service that exists electronically on the Internet. In other words, even though the content appears on mobile phones and other wireless communications devices, as opposed to computer screens, m-commerce is still considered e-commerce.

The reason I chose this word is because I deal with e-commerce all the time. Also I have an android phone and was interested in learning what m-commerce meant and how it differed from regular e-commerce.

#2 Gobbledygook

Definition: A string of incoherent letters and symbols. You may see a bunch of gobbledygook on your computer screen when a program is trying to read data from a program it does not support, or when a message is encrypted.

The reason I chose this word is because it caught my eye. But now that I know what it is, I can say that I see gobbledygook quite often. It comes most often for me when I try to open a file that my computer can read. It normally opens up notepad and give a long string of code that make no sence at all. Hence, the awesome term gobbledygook.

#3 Gremlins

Definition:The mysterious characters that sometimes appear on your computer screen, often in text documents and sometimes in code or e-mail messages.

For instance, if you copy the contents of a file from one program to another by highlighting the text with your cursor and then cutting-and-pasting, strange boxes or symbols may appear in the white space. At that point, you have to figure out another way to transfer the information or you have to go through and delete the bad characters, all the while muttering, “Darn gremlins.”

Reason: Since I work with website and the encoding of websites I run into gremlins all the time. I just didn’t know they shared the same name as the 1984 movie. Very interesting. I do know that a lot of times they are caused from style formatting that tries to get copied but isn’t supported in program it is pasted into.

#4 Geekosphere

Definition: The area surrounding one’s computer, where trinkets, personal mementos, toys and monitor pets are displayed. This is the place where geeks can “show their colors.”

Reason: The reason I was interested in this is the fact that my family has a lot of geeks. And I know they have a desk that would qualify as a Geekosphere.

#5 Gearhead

Definition:Another name for a nerd or geek, this term describes a person who is interested in owning the latest gadgets or gizmos.

Reason: This describes my family to a T. (Even though there is no “t” in family) All of us, except my youngest sister, have either the Android or iPhone, including my parents. There is enough computers in all our houses combined that each person could get on one at the same time, and we’d still have a leftover computer for the dog.

#6 Hairball

Definition:Any tangled mess. Often refers to poorly written computer code with Microsoft’s name frequently invoked, but could simply be any organization’s maze of rules and regulations.

Reason: It’s another crazy word that shows today’s technical jargon. I’ve seen code for website that reminded me of this description.

#7 HotDog

Definition: The HotDog Professional Web Editor is an HTML Authoring tool for Windows 95. Even though HotDog is tremendously powerful and feature-rich, the program is very user-friendly thanks to the superb built-in help files, detailed tutorials and intuitive interface. You can download a free fully-functional evaluation copy of HotDog now and try this Web editor for 14 days. Get A HotDog Now

Reason: I was curious to find out what would be the definition for hotdog. Now that I see it’s a HTML editer, I really don’t understand why they used that term. I’ve actually never heard of this. I guess I’m too narrow in keeping with my Adobe Dreamweaver program.

#8 Link Juice

Definition:Jargon that refers to the quality of a Web site’s link power, as in page rank, number of link votes, etc. – that are obtained from backlinks. This expression was coined by SEO consultant Greg Boser, for example “I need to get some more link juice for my latest site.”

Reason: Orange juice, apple juice, beetle juice, now link juice. Don’t think I will be drinking this anytime soon. Again with working with websites, I was interested in learning this.

#9 Man

(Metropolitan Area Network)

Definition: A data network designed for a town or city. MANs are considered larger than LANs but smaller than WANs. MANs are characterized by high-speed connections over fiber-optic cable.

Reason: At first I was going to compare to see I met the definition. But after clicking on it I realized what it meant. Hilarious to know that it’s used.

#10 Zombie

Definition: Originally it referred to an abandoned Web site that remains online (such as a ghost site or an orphan annie).

The definition of “zombie” has been extended to include a PC that has received either a virus or a Trojan program which causes it to be used as a spam generator without the user’s knowledge. For example, in June of 2007 a 27-year-old man, Robert Alan Soloway, described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers was arrested and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail. He was accused of using networks of compromised “zombie” computers to send out millions upon millions of spam e-mails.

The use of PC zombies to generate spam increases as more small businesses and individuals gain Internet connections. Spam is a major problem because it uses up bandwidth and because it can make the Internet experience very frustrating! Zombies are considered a security breach. It is necessary to use anti-virus software on your machine and run it on a regular basis.

The term zombie also describes a Unix/Linux process that have ended but the process creator/parent has not acknowledged this yet. What happens is the zombie process will consume a small amount of resources until it is killed by the parent process that created it.

My comments: I was interested to find out what zombie was used for. I was also glad to find out that I do not have a zombie living in my house. Do you have a zombie living in your house?