*The Integrated Newsroom

' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '

Glossary of Online Journalism terms

(Compiled from Brown P., Harper C. and http://www0.delphi.com/navnet/glossary/index.html)

archive
A storage repository for software, data, or other materials to be saved and preserved.

ARPANET
The network created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) that became the Internet.

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard way to encode upper and lower case letters in the English alphabet, numbers, and special characters using only seven digits, and therefore limited to 128 characters. The basis for coding simple text files.

bandwidth
Literally, the frequency width of a transmission channel in Hertz, kiloHertz, megaHertz, etc. Often used as an expression of the amount of data that can be sent through a circuit. The greater the bandwidth, the greater the amount of data that can travel in a given time period

Domain Name System (DNS)
Domain Name System. DNS servers are located at many strategic places on the nets to resolve the routing of e-mail and Internet connections.

e-mail
Electronic mail. One of the earliest standard Internet protocols which enables people with different computers and operating systems to communicate with each other. E-mail allows one-to-one or one-to-many mailings.

E-zine
An electronic newsmagazine published on the WWW.

Electronic Journalism
Newsgathering via the WWW, where journalists puts together a news piece for publication on the WWW.

FAQ
Acronym for Frequently Asked Questions. FAQ files are collections of common questions and answers for a particular subject area.

firewall
Firewall refers to the concept of a security interface or gateway between a closed network and the outside Internet that blocks or manages communications in and out of the network. The security may be provided by passwords, authentication techniques, software, and hardware. See proxy server.

GUI
Graphical User Interface. Pronounced "gooey". An operating system inteface between the user and the computer based on graphics. GUIs typically use a mouse or other tracking device and icons.

hit
In search terminology, every listing a search engine returns from a search is called a hit. The term hit is also used to refer to calls on a web server.

HTML
HyperText Markup Language. The coding system used to create WWW pages. A page written in HTML is a text file that includes tags in angle brackets and files written in HTML generally use an .html or .htm extension.

http
HyperText Transfer Protocol. It is the main protocol used on the World Wide Web that enables linking to other web sites. Addressing to other web pages begins with "http://" and is followed by the domain name or IP address.

hypertext
A form of text which includes visible links to other pages of text or media, accessible by clicking or selecting the links.

Internet
The Internet is a network of networks which began in the US defence industry, evolved in American universities and now has expanded to include the commercial and domestic sector.

IP address
IP addresses, together with domain addresses are the two forms of Internet addresses in common use. IP addresses consist of four numbers between 0 and 255, separated by dots.

ISDN
Integrated Services Digital Network. A technology that carries data over phone lines at up to 128Kbps for dialup users, but extends to fast broadband communications, too.

ISP
Internet Service Provider.

Mosaic
The breakthrough first graphical browser, developed by Marc Andreeson and others at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

NSFNet
National Science Foundation Network. The National Science Foundation followed on the earlier ARPANet by creating NSFNet in 1986 as a 56 Kbps backbone for the Internet.

push
The technology that puts pre-selected content directly on your computer screen from the Internet without your need to browse for it.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator. URLs specify the location of a resource in the Internet.

Usenet Newsgroups
Usenet Newsgroups are discussion groups about a topic that is reflected in their titles, such as alt.journalism.bne or alt.soc.culture.sg.

World Wide Web
The Web is a tool which enables the publication of interactive networked multimedia using the Internet.

WYSIWYG
Acronym for "What You See Is What You Get". The term applies to word processors and web page development software where you manipulate text and images directly without writing codes.