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| eBusiness eDefinitions Evoke eConfusion for eCommerce Entrepreneurs | ||
| I've seen a recurring question come up in relation to all words that have the *e* attached. "What does eBusiness, eCommerce, eShop or eANYTHING mean?" If a word can be defined without the *e* then it doesn't change the meaning of the word, just modifies it to indicate that it is online. The origin of the *e* is from the word electronic. The internet is creating a new vocabulary of previously non-existent terms such as *ezine*, which in common usage denotes a newsletter delivered by *email* (mail, add the *e* to get mail delivered online). Many of those new words are confusing because they are used by those in *ebusiness* (business online) without reference to their new meaning. Such as the term *cookie*, which refers to small, byte-sized pieces, or crumbs, of identifying information placed on your hard drive (often without your knowledge) at web sites you visit to identify you when you return to that site or indicate that you've viewed a particular advertisement online. For more detailed information on this term visit http://www.cookiecentral.com. Just for entertainment I recommend you visit a site dedicated to defining these new terms at http://www.netlingo.com, known as the "Internet Language Dictionary." At NetLingo the term "emoticon" is defined, :-) "Emoticons, meaning "icons that represent emotion," grew out of the need to display feeling in the 2-dimensional, online written world. When speaking F2F (face-to-face), a person's facial expressions help you understand the meaning of what he or she is saying. Emoticons are an attempt to bring that extra nuance to online communications, by composing a face out of ASCII characters." Could you send the "server" for more coffee? As you spend more time on the internet you will see confusing references and technical terms scattered about the place like toys all over the floor of a kid's room. Most often you can ignore them because even if you knew the definition, it still won't mean anything to you. Try talking to your mother about "servers." Web authors will use terms that they believe the whole world knows, when really, only web authors understand them. They forget that only one percent of the human population has a computer, yet they think that every visitor to a web page should understand their lingo! To see a typical geek definition of "server" go to http://www.nightflight.com/cgi-bin/foldoc.cgi?query=server where they offer this tasty tidbit: The connection between client and server is normally by means of message passing, often over a network, and uses some protocol to encode the client's requests and the server's responses. The server may run continuously (as a daemon), waiting for requests to arrive or it may be invoked by some higher level daemon which controls a number of specific servers (inetd on Unix). Wow! Now that's a mouthful! Doughnut make you crazy? I'd like to offer an unfrosted version without the nuts for those of us seeking nutrition over junkfood! OK, allow me just one more food pun and you can get back to work! ;-) Server is just the technogeek-name for the remote computer that stores the web page you want to see! You could actually imagine it to be your waiter serving you web pages instead of your lunch. "Hello! Welcome to Internet Cafe! My name is Betty, and I'll be your server. Our special today is eBay a'lamode with a side of Yahoo! Would you like Java with your meal sir? Of course we serve complimentary cookies with that!" __________________________________ Join the WebSite101 "Reading List" Small Business Web Marketing, an entertaining Weekly Ezine emphasizing small business online. Subscribe by e-mail to: WebSite101-subscribe@listbot.com |
