This Week Terms And Definitions

Baud - the number of signal changes transmitted per second during data transmission by modem.

Baud rate - the speed at which a modem transmits data, or the number of "events" it can handle per second.

Encode - the conversion of data to a machine-readable form.

Emulation- to simulate otherwise incompatible software or hardware to make it compatible - running Microsoft Windows on a Macintosh computer, for example.

Human-computer interaction - a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them.

YouTube Symphony Orchestra

YouTube gathered a whole Symphony Orchestra from around the world!

http://youtube.com/symphony

The world's first collaborative online orchestra performed at Carnegie Hall on April 15, 2009. Selected by the YouTube community and several members of the world's most renowned orchestras, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra is made up of over 96 professional and amateur musicians from 30+ countries and territories on six continents and represents 26 different instruments.

They have been chosen  out of thousands of musicians - who posted audition videos on the popular website.

The talented musicians learnt the piece via internet tutorials - before coming together for the first time this week in New York.

This Week Terms And Definitions

CMS - Content Management System - a computer application used to create, edit, manage, search and publish various kinds of digital media and electronic text. They are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures.

Browser chrome - the borders of a Web browser window, which include the window frames, menus, toolbars and scroll bars. When designing a Web page, the browser chrome must be added to determine the width of the page. Viewport - the remaining viewable space in the browser window.

Task-oriented schemes - schemes that organize content and applications into a collection of processes, functions, or tasks. These schemes are appropriate when it's possible to anticipate a limited number of high-priority tasks that users will want to perform. On the Web, task-oriented organization schemes are most common in the context of e-commerce web sites.

Microsoft Will Deploy Internet Explorer 8 Through Automatic Update

The original article "Prepare for Automatic Update Distribution of IE8"

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/04/10/prepare-for-automatic-update-distribution-of-ie8.aspx

Microsoft plans to distribute Internet Explorer 8 to computers running previous versions of IE (IE 6 or IE 7) via Automatic

Updates starting from the 3rd week of April. The update will be rolled out gradually from a small user

base to large number of users. The update will be a ‘high priority‘ update for systems running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and is an ‘important‘ update for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The final version of IE8 was distributed via automatic update recently to users still running pre-release versions of IE8, Beta 2/RC1.

Organizations can use the IE8 Blocker Toolkit to block automatic delivery of IE8. The blocking tool has to be in place by the week of April 20th. IE8 will be released to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) in July 2009 and will be classified as an Update Rollup.

P.S.' Why to use a blocker?' - we wondered at the office. Then we were told that "the IE8 blocker is meant for admins to delay the installation until they are ready to install them for the entire organization due to certain issues (such as ocompatiblity issues, security issues, or testing for reliablity)". At our office the machines will be updated as soon as our geek-aid aministrator has a chance to do it.

This Week Terms And Definitions

Animated GIF - type of GIF image that can be animated by combining several images into a single GIF file. Applications that support the animated GIF standard, GIF89A, cycle through each image. GIF animation doesn't give the same level of control and flexibility as other animation formats but it has become extremely popular because it is supported by nearly all Web browsers. In addition, animated GIF files tend to be quite a bit smaller that other animation files, such as Java applets.

GIF - stands for graphics interchange format, a bit-mapped graphics file format used by the World Wide Web, CompuServe and many BBSs. GIF supports color
and various resolutions. It also includes data compression, but because it is limited to 256 colors, it is more effective for scanned images such as illustrations rather than color photos.

HoneyMonkey - a computer or a virtual PC that actively mimics the actions of a user surfing the Web. A series of "monkey programs," which drive a browser in a manner similar to that of a human user, run on virtual machines in order to detect exploit sites. The browsers can be configured to run with fully updated software, or without specific updates in order to look for exploit sites that target specific vulnerabilities. In this manner, the attacks more likely to impact customers can be analyzed and detected.

Podcasting is similar in nature to RSS, which allows subscribers to subscribe to a set of feeds to view syndicated Web site content. With podcasting however, you have a set of subscriptions that are checked regularly for updates and instead of reading the feeds on your computer screen, you listen to the new content on on your iPod (or like device).

Shockwave - a technology developed by Macromedia, Inc. that enables Web pages to include multimedia objects. To create a shockwave object, you use Macromedia's multimedia authoring tool called Director, and then compress the object with a program called Afterburner. You then insert a reference to the "shocked" file in your Web page. To see a Shockwave object, you need the Shockwave plug-in, a program that integrates seamlessly with your Web browser. The plug-in is freely available from Macromedia's Web site as either a Netscape Navigator plug-in or an ActiveX control. Shockwave supports audio, animation, video and even processes user actions such as mouse clicks. It runs on all Windows platforms as well as the Macintosh.

4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for Business

Original article by Sarah Perez was posted on Read Write Web

Twitter was originally intended for communication among individuals, a number of organizations have begun to actively participate on the platform. However, not all companies are using Twitter in the same way. "As Twitter is a public forum, employees should understand the limits of what is acceptable and desirable," says Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner.

Based on Gartner’s research, they have narrowed down the four different ways that companies are using Twitter today: direct, indirect, internal, and signaling.

Direct

Some companies are using Twitter as a marketing or public relations channel, much like an extension to their corporate blogs. They will post about corporate accomplishments and distribute links that take people back to corporate web pages, press releases, and other promotional sites.

Indirect           

The second method some companies use on Twitter is to let their employees tweet instead. As the employees use Twitter to enhance their own personal reputations, the company's reputation is also enhanced by proxy. 

Internal

Some companies use Twitter internally to share ideas or communicate about what projects they're working on. If this information is confidential in nature, employees either need to protect their updates or even better, not use Twitter at all. Gartner doesn't recommend using Twitter or any other consumer microblogging service in this way because there's no guarantee of security.

Inbound Signaling

Some companies aren't as much Twitter participants as they are Twitter "listeners." Using search tools like search.twitter.com or desktop applications like TweetDeck are easy ways to keep track of what's being said about the company, its product names, or even the industry as a whole. Smart companies are tuning in to these micro-conversations to get early warnings of problems and to collect feedback on product issues or ideas.

This Week Terms And Definitions

Digg This - on many blogs including Typepad, Blogger, Live Journal, Moveable Type, and Wordpress, the words "Digg This" may appear below a blog post as a hyperlink which readers can click to submit the post to the Digg Web site.

Facebook - the name of a social networking site (SNS) that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, post photos, share links and exchange other information. Facebook users can see only the profiles of confirmed friends and the people in their networks.

TrackBack - a type of peer-to-peer communication system that was designed to send notification of updates between two Web sites via a Trackback Ping. Ping in reference to TrackBack refers to a small message sent from one Web server to another. TrackBacks are useful for informing a Web site that you have referenced its Web site within your own Web site, and is popular with bloggers.

Twitter - free social messaging tool that lets people stay connected through brief text message updates up to 140 characters in length. Twitter is based on you answering the question "What are you doing?" You then post their thoughts, observations, and goings-on in their day. Your update is posted on your Twitter profile page through SMS text messaging, the Twitter Web site, instant messaging, RSS, e-mail, or through other social applications and sites, such as Facebook.

YouTube - popular free video-sharing Web site that lets registered users upload and share video clips online at the YouTube.com Web site. To view the videos you are not required to register. Launched in 2005 by former PayPal employees, the video-sharing site was acquired by Google Inc. in October 2006 for US $1.65 billion in Google stock. YouTube is currently based in San Bruno, CA and is a subsidiary of Google, Inc.