Technology Glossary

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Music, Books, Pictures, Wireless

iPod
Apple’s portable media player (music, books, pictures, video)
MP3 players
A digital audio player (DAP), more commonly referred to as an MP3 player, is a consumer electronics device that has the primary function of storing, organizing and playing audio files (music, audio books, etc.). Some DAPs are also referred to as portable media players as they have image-viewing and/or video-playing support.  MP3 refers to a patented digital audio encoding format and is the most common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as the  standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players.
Zune (Microsoft) and SanDisk’s Sansa View, Clip and Fuze
All are other popular MP3 players.
iPod Touch
iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, and Wi-Fi mobile platform designed and marketed by Apple Inc.
Kindle
Amazon’s Kindle is a software and hardware platform for reading electronic books (e-books), developed by Amazon.com.  Three hardware devices, known as "Kindle", "Kindle 2," and "Kindle DX" support this platform, as does an iPhone application called "Kindle for iPhone."
Playaway
Playaway is a device used to listen to audiobooks.  Each Playaway comes with the digital content already pre-loaded on it and a battery to make it play.
WMA
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. It was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs.

Smartphones

A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality. There is no industry standard definition of a smartphone. Many  smartphones  are phones with advanced features like e-mail, Internet and e-book reader capabilities. Some are a miniature computer that has phone capability. Smartphone Reviews; Smartphone, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some Smartphones

  • iPhone 3G and original
  • Blackberry (Pearl, Curve, Storm)
  • Google android
Photosharing and Videosharing
Websites that allow you to store and share photos and videos

Social Networking

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services. Social network service from Wikipedia

Facebook
Facebook users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus. Facebook is targeted to the college age levels and was started at Harvard University. The website is free to users and generates revenue from advertising including banner ads
Myspace
Myspace is an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. MySpace was overtaken internationally by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors. MySpace operates solely on revenues generated by advertising as its user model possesses no paid-for features for the end user
Twitter
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. It is a business-oriented social networking site.  The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business.
Second Life
Second Life (SL) is a 3D virtual world accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid.

Gaming

Newest and popular gaming console
Wii (Nintendo)
Wii (Nintendo) is a home video game console featuring a wireless controller, the Wii Remote, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and detect movement in three dimensions.  The Wii is interactive and social gaming and includes video exercise games.
Also Xbox (Microsoft), Playstation  (Sony), Nintendo DS
Open Source
Open source describes a broad general type of software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent copyright restrictions. It is an explicit “feature” of open source that it may put no restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user. Open source software (OSS) projects are built and maintained by a network of volunteer programmers.
Examples of Open Source Software
Productivity: Open Office, Neo Office
ILS:  Evergreen. Koha, OPALS, Open Biblio
OS:  Linux
Browser:  Firefox
Download and search for Open Source Software

Cloud Computing

Computing performed over the Internet.  (Wikipedia Cloud Computing)
Cloud computing is the use of Internet-based services to support a business process. Cloud services typically have the following characteristics:
In the future, we won't have or need our data or software programs on our own personal computers, they'll be floating around on a server somewhere, accessible via the internet. The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted sometimes in computer network diagrams. In cloud computing resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Cloud computing services usually provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.
Cloud computing encompasses any free or subscription-based or pay-per-use service that works over the Internet. You use what you need. YouTube Video in the format of CommonCraft

Examples of cloud computing includes:

Google Docs
A free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application offered by Google. Documents, spreadsheets, forms and presentations can be created within the application itself, imported through the web interface, or sent via email. They can also be saved to the user's computer in a variety of formats or saved to the Google servers. Collaboration between users is also a feature of Google Docs. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time. In the case of spreadsheets, users can be notified of changes to any specified regions via e-mail.
The application supports the ISO standard OpenDocument format. It also includes support for proprietary formats such as .doc and .xls. 
Zoho
A competitor of Google Docs.  Web Office programs for personal use for free some costs for “Professional Versions”.

Other examples of cloud computing:

  • BaseCamp – online collaborative project management tool
  • Apple’s Mobile Me – email, files storage photos
  • MediaFire – online file storage
  • Delicious - (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.