Basic Internet Definitions for New Internet Users
In any type of business, there is an industry lingo of words, acronyms, and phrases that those familiar with the business understand and take for granted. Problems then arise when they assume other people know this lingo and then use the industry specific terms when trying to communicate. If you’ve spent any amount of time with people who have served in the military, you probably know what we are talking about. Some of their expressions like “squared away” and “dead wood” are more commonplace but others like “soup sandwich” and “ODF” might as well be in a different language.
Here at GoBigWest, we realize we are in the Internet Service Provider business and that there is a specific language associated with this business. That is why in each of the weekly letters we send out, we make a conscious effort to keep the language of the letters clear and readable to Internet users of varying levels of expertise. While the feedback we receive from you indicates that we are successful at this a majority of the time, GoBigWest serves a wide range of customers with such a wide range of Internet experience, that we may be guilty of using terms that are not entirely clear to all readers. Because of this, we would like to provide some basic definitions for some key computer and Internet terms. This list is meant for the newer users of computers and the Internet and is by no means a complete list, but it can serve as a starting point for learning more about the Internet.
Hardware – The physical parts of a computer. This includes the internal chips, wiring, and drives as well as the monitor, keyboard, and other devices.
Software – The computer programs that tell the hardware how to work. Also commonly referred to as a program.
Operating System – The program that manages all other programs on the computer. Examples are Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) – The coded language that is used to create web pages. HTML is a set of instructions for displaying a web page.
Browser – A software program that is used to view web pages. The browser converts HTML language into viewable web pages. Examples are Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox and Safari.
Server – A computer that provides, or serves, information to other computers.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) – The address of web pages and documents on the Internet. For example, www.gobigwest.com is the URL for the GoBigWest homepage. When you type a Web page address, or URL, into your browser, you are sending a request to the server that stores the Web page to serve the Web page, usually in HTML format, to your browser where it is converted into the text and pictures that you are accustomed to seeing.
This list is small but should be sufficient for understanding the language that we use in our letters. If, however, we do include a word or phrase that you do not understand or you run across a word elsewhere that you need defined, the Google search engine has a good tool for getting definitions that may not be in the dictionary. To use the tool, go to www.google.com and type define: (with the colon) and then the word that you would like defined. This will return multiple definitions for the word from various sources.
