Sorry to disappoint, but in the world of computers a cookie is not a tasty treat. Rather, the term refers to the data that most websites send your computer while you’re visiting their page. The data retrieves information about what you do or look at while on the site and sends it back to the company so they can tailor your experience to your preferences the next time you visit.

For instance, if you just bought an awesome speaker on Amazon, expect to see advertisements for other speakers, sound systems, and accessories the next time you visit the webstore.

Not to be confused with PDA, the oft used acronym for a public display of affection. A PDF is short for “portable document format”.

It is usually seen as a file extension, where the .pdf follows the name of a readable document you are either opening, saving, or sharing.

Almost everyone on the planet has an email address these days, and most people tend to have at least a few of them for different purposes. It’s about as straightforward as it sounds, though; email = electronic mail.

Ever since HTML-enabled emails hit the scene, it turned the billions of short-scripted messages we send and receive into the brilliantly colored, formatted and interactive messages we receive without ever having to download it to our hard drive. Truly, it’s a beautiful thing.

While internet spam is not quite the same thing as the processed, junk food, canned meat-product from Hormel, it’s also not really that far off the mark. Spam is what you get when you receive a ton of emails from people and/or companies seemingly out of nowhere. They’re usually trying to get you to sign up for some “free” trial, subscribe to their blog, or just flat out steal your money.

Unfortunately, this type of “junk mail” is so ubiquitous that most email service providers automatically have a folder designated specifically for spam, but we are happy it’s there.

Not to worry, a mouse in the computer world is not a pest but your best friend! It is one of the main components of web surfing and is a small, clickable object that fits right into the palm of your hand.

They can either come with a cord or be wireless, and most nowadays use a small laser projected onto a surface that lets you guide your cursor wherever your heart desires.

Both bits and bytes are units of data measurement, and they are very, very small. A bit is short for “Binary DigIT, the smallest unit of measurements for data, and is represented as either a 0 or a 1. A standard page of text has roughly 16,000 bits.

Conversely, bytes are comprised of 8 “sets” of bits and account for just one character in the computers memory. While bits are generally used to determine the transfer speeds of data, a byte measures things like your hard disk space, memory, and a file’s size.

You use them all the time, but do you know what USB actually stands for? On the off-chance you don’t, it’s an acronym for “Universal Serial Bus”. It is a type of port that allows you to plug various devices into your computer.

Most computers come with several USB ports, making it possible to utilize many devices at once while simultaneously transferring information in text, music, video, or games between them.

Memes are usually sent as an image, GIF, or video and often have text accompanying them. They spread through social media network sharing and generally represent a cultural or subcultural attitude toward any given subject.

The term “meme” was essentially hijacked from the concept put forth by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Published in 1976, in the book the word is used to define how these types of “cultural information” get passed around.

Just like it implies, this term is short for a word document. Just to confuse you, though, a word doc. can contain much more than just words, including pictures, drawing, graphs, charts, and diagrams. Essentially, word doc. is just referring to a text document created in a word processor, such as Microsoft Word, and is meant to be interpreted as a readable file.

People are constantly visiting them, praising them, and trolling them, but what are they. Basically, a blog could be considered an online journal when it first hit the internet scene and was known as a Web Log. Lazy as we web-surfers are, though, we shortened that phrase right up into the simple, catchy term blog.

Nowadays a blog can either be run personally or commercially. Commercial blogs pay different writers to cover a wide variety of topics whereas most personal blogs stick to one or two niche subjects.

Believe it or not you’re already familiar with these. A URL is that long string of letters, numbers, backslashes, and symbols you see running across the web search bar. It’s short for “Uniform Resource Locator”, and it directs a person to the exact website it matches up with in an online search.

Again, this is where the internet world loves to confuse people. Essentially, the two are the same thing. Both take a terrible toll on your computer, but worms can replicate once they are on it.

Viruses are sometimes referred to as worms because that is the best way to describe their actions; worming their way through the memory and hard drive of your computer. Unlike a standard virus, worms can replicate themselves as invisible files and eat up so much of your disk space that it can cause your computer to crash. Basically, if you have either of them it isn’t good.

A hacker is exactly what it sounds like; someone who hacks their way in or through something. In tech-terms, it specifically refers to a person that “hacks” their way through security systems to steal your information or override your actions.

Most hackers don’t concern themselves with your average, everyday citizens, but they repeatedly try to hack through the security programming of large corporations every day.

Originally a firewall was used to describe a physical fire-retardant wall that contained fires and kept them from spreading to adjacent rooms within a building.

In internet terms, a firewall might not keep actual fires at bay, but it does still function in much the same way. On a computer, a firewall restricts the types of data that are allowed to pass through and curbs any damage caused by unauthorized users.

Let’s start with the “G” in these terms. Both 3G and 4G stand for 3rd and 4th generation and they are referring to cell phone data standards, where 4Glte stands for 4th generation long term evolution, which leads us into our next category; 5G.

This is the next level generation in cellular data technology. Essentially, the main difference that has everyone talking is faster download speeds, with a minimum average of up to 50Mbps compared to the current average of 15Mbps.

Bandwidth is the term used for the amount of data that can pass through a cable connection or a modem at any given time. This is where those bits per second measurements come into play. Think of a river. That river represents bandwidth. Now, the bps are boats on that river. The wider the river (bandwidth) the more boats (bps) can travel along the river at one time without slowing down.

Bandwidth operates much like the river analogy, but in terms of frequency. The higher the frequency the more bps of data that can travel through it at one time, which increases the speed of retrieving and sending data.

This is simply a mashup of words. Edutainment describes an activity, media, or genre that melds education with entertainment, making the educational material more interesting. Think of the channel Animal Planet, which has various shows that both entertain their viewers while educating them on the subject matter.

A dashboard is essentially where you keep your widgets in one place. What are widgets? They are basically interactive icons that perform various functions. Some tell you the weather and time, others tell you about the stock market and traffic. They also give you access to things like news sites, games, or streaming content.

Different websites have different dashboards. So, your online banking, for instance, will have its own dashboard with widgets like bill pay, account activity, lines of credit, etc., while your Fit Bit dashboard will have widgets pertaining to steps, burned calories, distance traveled and so on.

The term DNS is short for “Domain Name System”, something that is a Godsend. It acts as a directory between domain names and IP addresses. An IP address is a long string of numbers separated by 3 dots that identifies a person’s device while online. When you type in a domain name, such as shareably.net, the computer doesn’t automatically jump to that website. Rather it first communicates the name to the DNS to find the appropriate IP address and follows it accordingly.

GIFs are those small moving pictures you see on a lot of different websites. The term itself means “Graphics Interchange Format”, which describes what a GIF actually is in tech terms. A GIF is created using a compression formula that reduces the amount of indexed colors to a max of just 256. By doing this, the file itself is greatly decreased in terms of size and makes for much faster transmission or loading speeds online.

When you think of HDMI, you might think of the fat, unsightly cord used to connect a device to a TV to stream content, and you would be right. HDMI means “High-Definition Multimedia Interface”.

You know all those cables you normally plug into the AV inputs on your TV for audio and video? Well, with HDMI you can get all the functions of those cables in just one, albeit a fat one. Since HDMI operates digitally, it does away with the need for conversion from analog to digital and that is why the high-def video is of such a superior quality.

You’ve seen this acronym a million times online before, but do you know what it is? HTML is “Hyper-Text Markup Language”, and it is essentially the coding behind the words you are seeing now. The long string of code you can see when you right-click on any page and select “view source” is generally HTML, and programming has to abide by the “rules” of HTML in order for it to show up correctly for the end-user.

HTTP means “Hyper-Text Transport Protocol” and refers to the protocol that’s used to transport data over the web. All websites begin with this acronym because when you type in a website name or URL, the server then translates that as an HTML request to direct you to a certain page.

HTTPS is the same thing, only the “S” stands for secure. These are used for websites that collect private information, like your bank, and it encrypts the information being transmitted. These pages will usually display a padlock icon before the URL to denote that is is a secure website.

Have you ever read an article online with a word underlined and depicted in a different color than the rest of the text? If you click on that, it will normally link, or jump, to another page that explains or shows the subject matter that was being discussed. That is exactly what a hyperlink is; it links to other information from within a web page or article, and it is hyper because when you click the link it sends a request for the corresponding HTML.

A JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a file format for compressing images. Unlike a GIF, there are no restrictions on indexed colors and as a result, you can upload large-sized images with brilliant color. Unfortunately, JPEGS are considered a “lossy” type of format, meaning that some quality is lost during the compression. If it becomes too compressed, it will give it that boxy, pixelated look.

Malware is short for “Malicious Software” and refers to pretty much any software that can cause harm to your computer or device. The most common forms of malware include the worms and viruses mentioned previously, as well as Trojan horse or spyware.

Open source refers to software programs that are open and available to the general public. What this means is that not only can an open-source app or program be downloaded for free, but also that anyone can modify or distribute the materials or program to the public without any legal recourse.

The only real downside to open source software is that it generally doesn’t come with any tech support, but the good news is that you can find out how to troubleshoot most common issues via web forums and chat rooms.

Say you were to download a program of some kind, like a photo editor. Let’s say you want to add a certain function in your photo editor, like a particular filter, and it isn’t precoded into the editing software you’ve downloaded. A plug-in would be the answer.

Plug-ins, also known as add-ons, are software that can be installed within other software programs to add specific functions that don’t come with it.

You see them on the regular across all social media platforms, but you don’t really get the point. We’re here to help. First, it’s called a hashtag because the # symbol is also referred to as a “hash” symbol, and it is a tag because that is the nature of the what you’re doing; tagging people.

When someone inserts a hashtag into a post, it acts as an alert to all the people who follow that particular hashtag. Hashtags do not have any spaces or punctuation between words, and typically represent a movement or cultural issue that people want to stay up to date on. So, when they follow a certain hashtag, like #ilovedogs, and you insert that hashtag into one of your posts, it will alert the people following the hashtag.

You probably already figured this one out but in case you haven’t, netiquette is another one of those ever-useful word mashups that stands for net etiquette. While people aren’t as policed on their social skills as they are when face to face, there are still some golden rules to follow. Generally, trolling or seeking out people just to leave negative or hurtful remarks is considered one of the worst forms of bad netiquette on the internet. Another is spamming people or pushing your opinions on others in social forums.

As a general rule of thumb, it’s always a good idea to hang back and observe how people interact with one another on any given platform to get a good idea about how to conduct yourself in that arena.

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