In Part 2, I want to start off answering a question that I received from the SurveyMonkey questionnaire that was included in last week’s post. Copy and paste the link to the web-based anonymous survey via SurveyMonkey IF you’d like to participate and get an answer to a question that you were afraid to ask! Tech Terms Glossary survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/683J6DC
Here are the 6 questions that you will be able to comment on:
1) What are your questions or concerns with Computer Terms and Words?
2) Tell me more, do you have qualms about some of the abbreviations used in texts? Like ROTFL or BRB…
3) To what extent, are children looking to you for help?
4) How much effort does it take you to figure out computer/technological terms?
5) Overall, how do you think that having this glossary and definitions list will help you?
6) What are specific terms or words would you like definitions for?

1) The question that was asked is: What is Seary? First of all, though pronounced “Sear-E”, it is spelled Siri and was originally part of the US Dept. of Defense’s Artificial Intelligence center. In 2010, Siri was purchased to be a part of the Apple family of operating systems. Siri is a voice-enabled system that is able to answer questions, read messages, make calendar appoints, set reminders, reply to text messages, make phone calls, give driving directions etc.
2) SEO: SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is important to those who want to drive traffic to their websites. Having the right content or material on your website makes the search engines like it because it’ll have a higher ranking making it easier for people to find it. The major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Aol will rank web pages, videos, random information based on what they may consider to be relevant to Internet Users. A system is definitely needed to research a lot of information to help us find answers to our questions. The systems that collect information on the world-wide web that the search engines use are called algorithms which are like the ingredients to a recipe. The top 5 ingredients are found in the titles, words, links to other websites, the words in links and a good reputation by bringing different and engaging information.
3) Bot: Bot (shortened version of robot) is basically a computer driven device/ gadget/ equipment that is programmed to perform repetitive tasks automatically. The machine is often designed to mimic the actions of humans. The term bot can also be used to describe a software application that performs automated tasks at a faster rate than a human could possibly do. They can be programmed to identify profanity or common phrases and help with weather reports, sports scores, converting currency, supplying zip code information, taking orders and even shop for bargains.
And of course, cybercriminals have figured out how to use bots for the dark side. Bots have been used maliciously by having them skew results by committing “click fraud”, the unscrupulous harvesting of email addresses from databases and the purchasing of the best seats at concerts and sporting events with the malintent to scalp the tickets for a higher price among other cyber-hijacks.
4) Avatar: Avatar is an icon or a character that is used online to represent you, a real person. Avatars are frequently used for online games where players interact with each other. The Avatar image shows up whenever the player makes a move or some other contribution to the game.
5) Backup: Backup is a critical function that every computer User should know how to do. Backup is referring to making a copy of all your files to insure that you don’t lose important documents and data. Even though hard drives often are able to perform for many years, it doesn’t mean that they are foolproof or exempt to having issues which can bring havoc to the User. And to add to the possibility of computer challenges, it is not just hardware issues but software malfunctions can also contribute to damage to your files. So if you have important documents, photos, music or videos that you would hate to lose, doing a backup is imperative.
6) Kilobytes: Kilobyte is a measurement term used right along with megabytes and gigabytes. Bytes are how the size of computer data is measured. So a kilobyte is 1,000 bytes, a megabyte is 1,000 kilobytes and a gigabyte is 1000 megabytes. These units of measurement are used in relation to rates of data transfer in hard drives, flash drives, DVDs etc.
7) Skimmers: Skimmers are in the news all too frequently. Skimmers are the bogus credit card reader device attached to real credit card devices at gas pumps and ATM machines. Skimmers are difficult to detect and that is why they are so deceptively successful. To say that there is a plethora or an excessive amount of these criminal credit card readers is in my opinion, not an exaggeration. While doing research on this topic, I have scared myself into almost a state of paranoia about ever using my credit card!
8) Emoji: emoji is a word made up from two Japanese words which mean “picture character”. An emoji is a small image that is inserted into text just like a regular letter or character. Emojis are a way to express emotions like being happy with a smiley face or sad with a frown face etc. It began with just little faces and has blossomed into a whole array of other things like animals, flowers, activities and many other objects. Emojis have become fairly standard to many digital devices but be aware that if you send a message with an emoji to someone with devices that does not support emojis that by just placing this little symbol into your message that the Recipient will receive nothing not even the text that you’ve written.