word-formation
One may Google for something and/or Google someone, i.e. look for it/them on the web using a popular search-engine.
The other day I was upbraided by a colleague for using as a verb. I was explaining (as his eyelids drooped) a web-based system which we use in our work. I said that, the second time you log in, the system will probably have cookied your computer so that you won’t need to enter all your details again.
I note that, whereas MSN is the abbreviation for a range of Microsoft online services, it is now sometimes used to refer only to the instant-messaging system which is but one of those services. One may MSN someone, as one may message them. I feel tempted to say that one may messenge someone since at least one of those services is called a messenger (rather than a messager).
Webcam has meant a camera whose output appears continuously on a webpage, perhaps like live TV or perhaps in the form of a picture taken every few seconds or minutes which replaces its predecessor. It can now be used to refer to the use of a computer-connected camera as part of an online dialogue (such as an MSN session or a Skype phone call). The camera is, thus, called a webcam but is not on the web.
Internet is often used to mean the same as the worldwide web. The techies will tell you that the web is just part of the net, other components including email, messaging and file-transfer.
For many years now the IT community have tried to maintain a distinction between memory and storage. The former disappears when you switch off the machine while the latter persists. No wonder people confuse the two since, when you switch on your computer in the morning, you expect it to remember the work you did the day before in the shape of the files you saved. What’s needed is a term (and accompanying swearword) for when you’ve written eight pages of text without saving it to disk and someone in the street puts a pneumatic drill through a main power-cable outside your house.
Refresh used to be about attaining that nice, awake feeling you get after a cold shower or a strong cup of tea. Now it also means requesting a new version of a webpage. The user can do this and/or the website may determine that new versions of pages will be sent to users. Such auto-refreshing is used on pages which tell you how late your train is running. Understanding refreshing (as opposed to refreshment) is important for web-users because many assume that, when they look at a webpage, they are seeing a live picture as they would if they were watching television. They are actually seeing a copy of the page in the form that it was when they requested it, which could have been some time before; unless it’s refreshed, that is.
Computer-folks make an arcane distinction between key and button. The former is physical and on a keyboard. The latter is a representation of a physical key but on a screen.
The phrasal verb mouse-over involves one’s moving one’s on-screen pointer over something on the screen, in many cases a graphic which changes when you do that. This is an interesting use of mouse (the physical pointing-device) to mean pointer (the virtual thing on the screen). Some computers have neither mouses nor mice, but you can still move the pointer on the screen and, thus, mouse-over without a mouse.
My newest acquisition is “cloud” to mean the three-dimensional area in which one may receive wireless internet, thus a wifi cloud. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could see them and they were different colours like pink and baby-blue? Better still, if you could sit on them after a busy day’s work.
