Denver DataMan Computer Glossary

These words have been defined because they have been used in Denver DataMan publications or because they are commonly misunderstood.

Hard Drive

The Hard Drive or Hard Disk Drive is the primary long term storage for most computers. When you start your computer the information needed to open Windows or another operating system is loaded from the hard drive. Software like Word or QuickBooks as well as your files are also saved on the hard drive.

Index

Content added to a database so that it can be easily found when it is searched for. Windows indexes files so that when you search for the file your system can quickly produce the results. Google and other search engines index websites so that web users can rapidly search their databases of websites for the information they are looking for.

Indexing

When files are added to the computer their key contents like their file name, tags , other attributes and in some cases their content are added to an index. It is far quicker to search an index of the information than it is to search each file when you want to find information. Windows Vista was the first Windows operating system to include full indexing of files and that is why searching for information in Vista is so much faster.

Google and other search engines work on the same principal but on a broader scale for the Internet. A person adds content to their website and then Google is always looking, using software called bots, and when it finds new content it adds it to its index. Once again it is significantly faster to search an index than to search every word of the file. Imagine if Google did not use indexes and each time you wanted to find something every page on the Internet had to be searched - it would take weeks.

Open Source

Refers to software that makes it code open to the public. Generally open source projects are free and have many people contributing to them.

Some of the popular open source projects are becoming well known. For example OpenOffice.org Linux and Drupal (the platform that this site is created in.)You can also go to the The Open Source Initiative website.

Operating System

An operating system is an application like Windows or Mac OS which allows the user to access the computer's functions. In today's world, operating systems provide graphical user interfaces with icons to computer functions so users do not need learn all of the commands necessary to interface with the computer.

Pay-Per-Click

Advertising used on the Internet by Google and others wear the advertiser only pays for the numbers of users who click on their ad not the numbers of impressions (times the ad appears on a page).

Phishing

A type of attack when malicious website developers try to emulate a site that they are not. For example Chase uses chase.com but their is a phishing site called chasebank.com. Phishing can also be when a site looks for you to put too much information like your social security number.

Privacy Settings

Settings available to users of Facebook to control access to the information they provide on Facebook. Go to the Account button(in the upper right hand corner of the screen) and click Privacy Settings from the drop down option. Read Mark Zuckerberg's Blog on the topic.

RAM (Random Access Memory)

Short term memory that your computer uses to process the information that you are currently using on your computer. New software needs more RAM then some older applications in order to run well .

Router

A device used to share an Internet connection with other computers. Often a router will also have a firewall included in it as well as other tools for managing and securing an Internet connection.