Personal Digital Assistants:  Small, hand held computers that allow you to store notes, drawings and appointments using a pen shaped utensil while away from the office and transfer them to a larger computer or print them out.                                                                                               Definition taken from ClubPDA.

E-mail: An efficient and easy way to send messages quickly to other people, in your own office or around the world.  Some benefits to e-mail are that it is inexpensive, convenient and portable.  It is also a good way to keep records.  People tend to be more open in e-mail.  A downfall of e-mail, however, is that it is not completely private.  E-mail may be distributed or forwarded to others that the message does not concern.To find information on free e-mail services click on the mailbox.                                                                                                                                       Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee.

World Wide Web:  The leading information retrieval service of the Internet (the worldwide computer network). The Web gives users access to a vast array of documents that are connected to each other by means of hypertext or hypermedia links--ie, hyperlinks, electronic connections that link related pieces of information in order to allow a user easy access to them.                                                                                                       Definition taken from Britannica.

Word Processing Software: “Dominant tool for creating printed documents which can do far more then a typewriter could ever do.” Microsoft Word is an example of word processing software.                                                                                                                             Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 60.

Desktop Publishing: Sometimes refered to as DTP, it is similiar to word processing software, but was created for the purpose of assembling pages with photo’s, drawing, and graphs. Examples include Adobe Pagemaker and Adobe Illustrator.                                                                                                           Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, pgae 60.

CD-Rom:  “Compact Disk - Read Only Memory. A useful research tool which contains information collections of documents or ranging from back files of newspapers to sets of books on a particular subject. Microsoft Encarta is a multimedia example that contains not only textual information but also animated drawings, short video clips, and audio tracks.”                                                                                                  Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 61.

Network: “A group of computers connected so that they can share information.”                                                                                                  Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 65.

Local Area Network (LAN): “Small, private-office setups that connect computers in a single building or local area.”                                                                                                                                                             Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 65.

Wide Area Network: “A group of LAN’s which are connected to computers in separate locations.”                                                                                                                      Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 65.

Gateway: “Controls the passage of information between internal and external networks.”                                                                                                  Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 65.

Internet: “The world’s largest computer network, which is actually a network of networks.”                                                                                                                                                            Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 65.

Telnet: “A computer application which allows you to connect to a remote comptuer and run prograns on that computer.  Typically you must be authorized and have an account on that remote computer.”                                                                                                                                                                Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 65.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP): “Lets you copy files from a remote computer to you local computer.”                                                                                                                                                         Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 65.

Discussion Mailing List: “A mailing list which consists of people with a common interest.  User’s can subscribe to the list my sending an e-mail message to the list’s e-mail address. After sending the mail you will automatically receivea copy of any message posted to that list by any other subscriber of that list.”                                                                                                                                                            Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 67.

Video Conferencing: Videoconferencing is an interactive tool that uses video, computing, and communication technologies to allow people in different locations to meet face-to-face and perform most of the same meeting activities they would perform if all participants were in the same room. Participants can be at two locations or many different locations, domestic locations or international locations.
Definition taken fromVideo Bridging.

Usenet Newsgroups: “Similiar to discussion mailing lists, but they are accessed by through newgroup reader programs in Netscape, Internet Explorer, or some other web browser.  Once you subscribe you can post messages or read messages posted by other subscribers.”                                                                                                                                      Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 68.

Homepage: “A starting place for every website on the internet.”                                                                                                                                                           Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 68.

Universal Resource Locator (URL): “Each resource on the web has a unique address.”                                                                                                                                                            Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 68.

Intranet: “An Internet-type network, which uses the same type of technologies an the internet and the world wide web, whose information and access are restricted to a singe organization.”                                                                                                                                                         Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 69.

Telecommuting: “A relatively new concept which lets people work by being linked through computers, phones, and faxes.  Employees can work where it is most convenient for them, whether at home, in a suburban satelitte office, or on the road.”                                                                                                    Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 71.

As society becomes more advanced and more hi-tech, it is easy to become lost in the midst of all the new terms brought about by new technology.  It is important to keep up with the jargon though because it is a key part of society now as it will be in the future.   We have compiled a list of some of the most commonly used terms along with their definitions to help you keep up/stay abreast) with today’s technology.

Browser:  “Computer software which enables a user to search the world wide web. The two most popular browsers are Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer.”                                                                                                                                                                                            Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 68.

Hyperlink: “Interactive connections among sites on the web.”                                                                                                                                                           Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 68.

Voice Recogination Systems: “Computer software which will convert your voice to text, which frees you from keyboard or pen input.”                                                                                        Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 61.

Databases: “A collection of facts ranging from financial figures to the text of reports.  It is the location where much of a companies internal information is stored.”                                                                                                          Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee. page 60.

File Merge: “Word processor feature which gives you the capability to combine documents into one, saving yourself the trouble of retyping the files.”                                                                                                                                                         Definition taken from Excellence in Business Communications by Thill and Bovee, page 62.

Site last updated on May 7, 2000 at 1:17 PM  CST by Nicole Schmidt.

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