It’s really no fun struggling to keep up with the seemingly obscure terms while you sit through a session with your creative/technology consultant. I, for one hate not knowing the new acronyms on the block as they’re being thrown around in a conversation while I secretly try to make sense of it in my mind.

This is not ultimately the complete list or guide to all tech terms but what I have here are in my experience the most commonly heard/used. Behold, my tech-challenged friends, the essential list…

1. 4K: Four times the resolution of HD at 3840 x 2160. If your new TV doesn’t have 4K, you’ll need to replace it in the future. Trouble is there isn’t much content yet.

2. 21:9: The aspect ratio used by many movies for the cinema and Blu-ray. Often that results in black bars top and bottom of your TV when viewing them, but there are several dedicated 21:9 TVs coming.

3. 404: Originally a technical term for Not Found 404 (which is an error message seen on a Web page to indicate a requested URL was not found on a server)

4. Augmented Reality: A technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view.

5. ActiveX: A Windows technology which allows programmers to do various things on your computer. The early versions had security issues which hackers could exploit.

6. ADSL – Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line: A method of connecting a computer to the internet over a standard voice phone line using ethernet office networking technology. Most broadband connections work this way. Asymmetric because it is faster from internet to PC than the other way.

7. ADWare: Software which displays advertisements on your computer. Sometimes installed as part of a “free” application, sometimes by stealth. See known as Malware or Spyware.

8. Buffer: A temporary storage area for data, often used to “smooth out” incoming audio or video streams. Several seconds worth of material is stored in the buffer and it is then played back from there, so that if there is a brief interruption in the stream your music or video doesn’t stop.

9. Bandwidth: a range of frequencies within a given band, in particular that used for transmitting a signal.

10. Cache: A cache (pronounced CASH) is a place to store something temporarily in a computing environment.

11. Codec: The word is a combination of coder-decoder and is a program that encodes and decodes digital information. You’ll need the right codec to read a particular type of file, or receive a particular type of digital stream.

12. Compression: A way of making files smaller, either to fit into restricted storage space or to speed up transmission over the Internet. Popular compression standards include JPEG and GIF for pictures, MP3 for music files, MPEG, MP4, AVI and MOV for movie footage, and zip for just about everything else.

13. Cookies: A cookie is information that a Web site puts on your hard disk so that it can remember something about you at a later time. (More technically, it is information for future use that is stored by the server on the client side of a client/server communication.)

14. Defrag: Rearrangement of the files on a hard disk for faster data access. After the files are removed from a disk, the operating system tries to fill the vacant space with the new files. If a new file is too big to fit, it stores the excess data at another location. Over time, hundreds of files are scattered all over the disk in non-contiguous space resulting in higher data access time.

15. Down Time: This expression refers to lost production time due to a broken machine and its operator being unable to work. In modern usage, it refers to a slow network, or to the time a person needs to relax and recoup after hard work.

16. ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning: Business management software, typically a suite of integrated applications that a company can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities, including: Product planning, cost. Manufacturing or service delivery. Marketing and sales.

17. HFR – High Frame Rate: A cinematic term referring to a faster capture and subsequent playback of more video frames than usual. The Hobbit, for example, was captured in HFR, and therefore has smoother on screen action.

18. Hotspot: A hotspot is a physical location that offers Internet access over a wireless local area network (WLAN) through the use of a router connected to a link to an Internet service provider. Hotspots typically use Wi-Fi technology.

19. Hyperlink: Any kind of link on a webpage. Unless you typed this page’s URL in by hand, you got here by clicking on a hyperlink.

20. Interface: In a general sense, it is the portion of a program that interacts between a user and an application, meaning it is what you see on the computer screen. It usually refers to “user interface,” which consists of the set of operating system commands, graphical display formats, and other features designed for use on a computer or a program.

21. IoT – Internet of Things: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

22. IP Address: A numeric address that is given to servers and users connected to the Internet. For servers, it is translated into a domain name, by a Domain Name Server (DNS). For users, it is assigned by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) when the user goes online.

23. Java: A programming language used to create small programs called applets, often to produce special effects on web pages.

24. PING: Traditionally this term refers to an Internet program used to determine whether a specific IP address is accessible or online. It works by sending a packet to the specified address and waiting for a reply. PING (pronounced “ping” as in the game “ping pong”) is used primarily to troubleshoot Internet connections.

25. Plug and Play: A standard for add-in hardware that requires it to identify itself on demand (see: hot plugging). Most computer systems are now designed to be plug-and-play, so that you can buy it, bring it home, plug it in, and start playing.

26. Scalability: Refers to the ability of hardware or software or even a brand, to adapt to increased demands while continuing to work accurately. It also describes how well a solution to some problem will work when the size of the problem increases at a later time.

Visit the Helios Media Design page to find out more about Lydia's work.

_{This post was originally published on Helios Media Design and has been reposted on Executive Lifestyle with the permission of the author.
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