Clear Answers for Common Questions

The author of this wiseGEEK article might be a writer/musician from Alabama, the business writer for a Florida newspaper or the resident professional at a golf course in Pennsylvania. According to the Google search engine, the writer, the journalist and the golf pro all have one thing in common ...

Geek is a popular slang term that has been around in some form for over a century. In the 1920s, a geek was a freak show performer that swallowed bugs and other animals. Today, the word generally has a more positive connotation, used to refer to someone who has a ...

The word emoticon is a combination of the words emotion and icon. Emoticons are used online to covey intonation or voice inflection, bodily gestures and emotion behind statements that might otherwise be misinterpreted. The most common emoticon is a smiley face, made with the colon for eyes, and the left ...

A typical conference may last over a weekend, or perhaps as long as a week. It usually has a set agenda, guest speakers, presenters and opportunities for forum discussions. If you attend such a conference, unless you’re presenting, your primary role is to listen to lectures or watch presentations ...

PEBKAC stands for “problem exists between keyboard and chair” and is a term for user error. This acronym is frequently used by tech support personnel to identify a problem caused by a person, not by the computer’s hardware or software. The term may be used in a humorous and ...

Nerdcore is a genre of music with a heavy focus on traditionally nerdy or geeky subjects. It may also be called “geeksta rap,” in a mocking reference to gangsta rap. The artists who perform nerdcore usually self-identify as nerds and they typically describe their own work as nerdcore, although ...

A lolcat is an image of cat with an idiosyncratic and often grammatically incorrect caption superimposed. It is an excellent example of an Internet meme, a unit of cultural information which is rapidly shared between people. Lolcats most frequently pop up on Internet boards and in threaded conversations, although there ...

Internet slang includes expressions relative to networking technologies and computers in general. Though slang typically refers to words specific to a group, club, sport, hobby, or even a generation, in the broadest sense Internet slang also includes emoticons, or simple graphics typed with keyboard strokes. The most common of these ...

In cyber slang, in internaut is a person who is ultra-familiar with the Internet. The word is a combination of the words “Internet” and “astronaut,” and it is derived from the use of the word "cyberspace" to describe the Internet; an astronaut travels into outer space, and an internaut ...

OneWebDay is a day set aside to honor the Internet and the culture that has ballooned up as a result. It was first held in 2006 and again in 2007. Expected to be an annual celebration, OneWebDay is observed on 22 September. In addition to celebrating the Internet and the ...

An Internet troll is someone who posts offensive, controversial, or divisive material on an Internet community. Trolls are an unfortunately common occurrence on many communities across the Internet, and there are various steps which can be taken to combat them. If you are currently struggling with an Internet troll, the ...

The moof monster is an Internet legend that people may refer to when they are using Internet relay chat (IRC) channels. Though there are now many ways to communicate in real time via the Internet, IRC remains popular especially among longtime users, and there are IRC channels available for virtually ...

Flaming is the often deliberate act of posting or writing messages on Internet bulletin boards and message groups that have the intent of insulting or creating dissent within a group. An Internet flame is often filled with coarse language and personal insults. It is meant to hurt people’s feelings ...

Network neutrality, often shortened to "net neutrality," is a business philosophy that supports the idea that all content and services that use a network should be treated the same. Although it relates to any form of network, be it a telephone service or cable television, the term is most often ...

In 2006, Time Magazine made an interesting choice for person of the year. The person was “you” meaning more specifically, people who use the Internet to write articles, post videos or blogs, and contribute to different Internet groups. Essentially, the “you” referred to another word that has become more frequently ...

National Blog Posting Month, frequently abbreviated as NaBloPoMo, is a month-long writing exercise that occurs each November. The first NaBloPoMo occurred in November of 2006 at the urging of American blogger M. Kennedy. Kennedy was inspired by National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which also happens every November, and thought ...

The blogosphere is a term used to describe the millions of interconnected blogs on the Internet. The term was first used in late 1999 as a joke, and continued to be used sporadically as a humorous term for the next few years. In contemporary usage it may either be used ...

Microblogging is a networking service that allows mobile users of cell phones and other Internet connected devices to stay abreast of activities within a group by receiving frequent published updates, typically of 140 characters or less. Text messages are uploaded to a microblogging service such as Twitter, Jaiku and others ...

Computer programmers are very familiar with the concept of unit testing. This is the testing of programs in small units to make sure that each part of the program is working as it should be. Now the concept of unit testing has been applied to the organization of personal life ...

Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies, sometimes also known as Godwin's Law, is a theory put forward by Mike Godwin in 1990. Godwin noticed that long-threaded discussions on the Internet tended to turn into mud slinging competitions by the end. The longer a thread got, the more likely ...

MMORPG stands for massively multiplayer online role playing game, a type of massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). An MMORPG is a computer-based role playing game (RPG) which takes place in an online virtual world with hundreds or thousands of other players. In the game, a player uses a client ...

Noob is an alternate spelling of “newbie,” which refers to an inexperienced person, particularly in the gaming community but also in other online venues. Noob can be used in a friendly, teasing manner, such as one experienced gamer saying to another, “You played that like a noob,” or in a ...

A cyberbully is a person who harasses or intimidates people online via message boards, chatrooms, social networks, and instant messages (IM). This may be an extension of offline bullying activities or it may be only related to online activities. People of all ages can experience cyberbullying, not just school children ...

Wedcasting is a relatively new application that involves the process of streaming a marriage or commitment ceremony over the Internet. Rather than videotaping a traditional ceremony and then using Internet resources to share the recorded event through the World Wide Web, the wedcast is broadcast real time. The wedcast allows ...

Bacn, which is pronounced bacon, is an alternative to email spam. Though both these terms are of food origin, they actually refer to different types of email that you can receive. Spam is unsolicited “junk mail” that shows up in your email box. You don’t want this stuff and ...

The term "wiki" refers to type of server software that allows visitors to easily create and edit web page content. Using a series of simple formatting codes, visitors on website can create their own content or add hyperlinks, headings, lists, tables, and images to existing pages. While HTML coding can ...

A Rickroll is a link which supposedly leads to something interesting and relevant to the conversation at hand, but actually lands the unwary user on a video of Rick Astley singing his 1980s hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Someone who clicks on such a link is said to have ...

The Foo in the term Foo Camp is an acronym for Friends of O’Reilly, and is the brainchild of O’Reilly Media’s head, Tim O’Reilly, and his Vice President, Sara Winge. O’Reilly Media humbly began as a technical writing firm in the 1970s, and has now ...

Second Life is a three-dimensional virtual community created entirely by its membership. Members assume an identity and take up residence in the environment, creating a customized avatar or personage to represent themselves. The avatar moves about in the virtual world using mouse control and intuitive keyboard buttons. The virtual ...

The concept of “email apnea” was coined by a researcher named Linda Stone who looks at the relationship between people and technology. She is also responsible for the “continuous partial attention” concept. Stone first wrote about email apnea in February 2008, and the topic rapidly traveled across the Internet through ...

A man demonstrates the evolution of modern dance, two slackers rap about their Sunday afternoon activities, and an overweight teen practices with a fake Jedi sword: this is the world of viral videos. Viral videos can best be described as short video clips with unusually shocking or humorous themes often ...

The Slashdot Effect is a sudden temporary uptick in traffic to a small website which is generated by a link from a larger website. The effect is named for a popular website called Slashdot, where users can submit stories of interest to share with other users. For a small website ...

A computer avatar is a personalized graphic file or rendering that represents a computer user. There are basically two types: those used at websites, such as on Web exchange boards, and those used in gaming and virtual worlds. The simplest type of avatar is a small graphics file used on ...

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a useful tool for keeping updated on your favorite websites. RSS makes use of an XML code that constantly scans the content of a website for updates and then broadcasts those updates to all subscribers through a feed. RSS feeds are typically used with ...

BarCamp is an international organization of unconferences that focus on internet technology and culture. Unconferences are known for being democratically run, planned by volunteers, free to attend, and participatory in nature. BarCamp is known for being an event where geeks of all shapes and sizes can teach, learn, and develop ...

The term hacker has a double meaning within the field of computing. It can be an expert computer programmer who creates complex software and hardware. These hackers are experts in the field of computing and have achieved a certain elite status within their field. The other commonly known meaning of ...

Leetspeak or leet is a substitution cipher created by computer users by replacing Latin letters with various codes that are meant to imply the same thing. The term is derived from the word “elite,” and leetspeak was originally used by computer hackers. The concept has entered the mainstream, and is ...

A Google® bomb or Googlebomb is an orchestrated attempt to inflate a site's search engine ranking, forcing it to turn up in the top of the search results for a specific phrase. Google® bombs are also known as link bombs; the “Google®” is a reference to ...

A unicorn chaser is an image or video of a unicorn which is viewed to cleanse the mind and the eyes after seeing unpleasant content on the Internet. The concept was pioneered by BoingBoing in August of 2003, when one of the editors posted a photograph of a mysterious rash ...

It's common among for Diggaholics to complain about the speed of the digg.com. Even though it's just a well-organized collection of links and text, Digg can be a painfully slow site, especially at peak times. With so many users and so many database queries, it's ...

A YouTube™ celebrity is a person, and in some cases, an animal, who has gained widespread recognition on the Internet and beyond by appearing in a video featured on YouTube.com. Not all YouTube™ celebrities have achieved their status voluntarily. Particularly during the early stages of viral videos ...

Discomgooglation is a recently coined term to describe symptoms noted by British scientists when people were deprived of ability to get their Internet “fix.” One research study, lead by psychologist Dr. David Lewis, showed that many people developed high levels of stress when they were not allowed to use the ...

There is no standard definition for web 2.0, as it is a cluster of ideas rather than anything clear-cut. However, O'Reilly's comments on the topic are seen as having special authority, and rank among the top Google search results for the term. The first premise of ...

A mash-up is a combination of tools or data from multiple sources. Mash-ups typically collect data from multiple web pages and bring their information into one simplified web application. Think of a mash-up as tool consolidation for web applications. For instance, an online mapping service might have ...

Nerdic is the language of the technologically advanced or aware, and was so named by the European company Pixmania, which has compiled a list of new terms that represent nerdic speak. Other terms for nerdic could include geek speak or tech. Most of the words in this language are new ...