| B2B | Business-to-Business - Jargon often used in conjunction with E-commerce when referring to Web Sites that are aimed at businesses rather than individuals. See also Portal. |
| B2C | Business-to-Consumer - Jargon often used in conjunction with E-commerce when referring to Web Sites that are aimed at individual consumers rather than businesses. See also Portal. |
| Backslash | This character "\", the opposite of slash. Backslash is never used in Internet addresses (URLs), it can only ever be part of a local Path or URI. |
| Bandwidth | If you think of computer-to-computer connections as "pipes" through which data flows, bandwidth is the diameter of the pipe. Hence terms such as "fat pipe", meaning a high-bandwidth and thus fast connection. Bandwidth is a relative term, so what is low in one situation may be very high in another: e.g. 10Mbs is slow for a local Network, but very fast for an Internet connection. |
| BBS | Bulletin Board System - A throwback to pre-Internet-for-everyone days (1995 and beyond) when people would dial-in, often at great expense, to specific services such as bulletin boards to do things that are now done using the Internet instead. Still used by some people, particularly for not very salubrious and/or illegal activities. |
| BCC | Blind Carbon Copy - When you send an E-mail to a list of people using a "To" list or a "CC" list, all the recipients can see the addresses of all the other recipients. Using "BCC" instead prevents the people in the To and CC lists from seeing that you have sent a copy to the people in the BCC list (hence 'blind'), and each BCC recipient is unaware of the other addresses in the BCC list. If you are sending an e-mail to several people who do not know each other and would not thank you for spreading their e-mail address around, then send it to yourself and put all the intended recipients in the BCC list instead of the To or CC lists. The terms date from the era of typing pools, manual typewriters and aching blackened fingers. |
| Beta | (usually pronounced "beeter" in the UK, "bayder" in the US) The final major testing stage of a Software product. All the functions and features of the product should have been finalised, and should all be present and working. The aim of beta testing is to flush out any faults, called "Bugs" (see also "Issues") before paying customers find them. Unfortunately, commercial beta testing is never 100% successful (or perhaps never 100% carried out) - see "Bug-free". |
| Binary | The real language of computers. If a file is described as Binary, its contents are not represented in a way that is directly human-readable. The opposite of a Binary file is a Text or ASCII file. |
| Bit | The smallest unit of information that a computer can handle. Bits have only two states, representable as on/off, true/false, 0/1 etc. However, bits are normally handled in blocks of 8, called Bytes. |
| Bitmap | A very basic, "lowest common denominator" file format for pictures (usually denoted by the file extension *BMP*). Unfortunately it is the format used by "Dazzle", the popular children's drawing program. Bitmaps should not be used if at all possible, and especially not for pictures on Web Sites, because they are uncompressed and therefore HUGE. A bitmap is typically 50 to 200 times bigger than any other (compressed) format such as PNG or JPG. A good way to store bitmaps, if you have a lot, is to "Zip" them into archives, which will take up about 1% of the original space. |
| Blog | Contraction of "Web Log". "Blogging" is the recently-evolved practice of writing a diary, or blog, on the Internet for all to see. Blogs often "borrow" from each other by linking to specific diary entries or linking to news "feeds" using an XML-based technology called RSS. |
| Bluetooth | Trendy new way to connect little bits of computer equipment to each other. Bluetooth is a simple, very short-range, radio-based Network Protocol. Typical uses are for connecting parts of a computer together, as opposed to connecting computers to each other. Some mobile phones and laptop computers are equipped with Bluetooth, but it remains to be seen whether it will move out of the "toys for boys" market into the mainstream. |
| BMP | Bitmap - Indicates an image in the very basic "Bitmap" format. If you have a choice, and you usually do, don't save pictures in bitmap format because it is the most inefficient in terms of storage space. Use PNG or JPEG instead. |
| Bookmark | Long Web Page addresses are a pain to type out every time you want to look at a frequently-used page, so most Browsers have the facility to "bookmark" a page. This adds the title and address of the page to a quick-access list, from which you can make a selection without any typing. In Internet Explorer, bookmarks are called "Favorites", even in the UK version. |
| Bot | Diminutive of robot. Usually refers to small automated Applications that collect information using the Internet, typically on behalf of Search Engines such as Google, or advertisers such as DoubleClick, or financial dealers looking for arbitrage opportunities. Bots can also be malicious, and are one of the tools used by criminals, often in conjunction with Viruses. |
| Bounce | E-mail term meaning "return to sender". If the sender's address is genuine they will receive a "message undeliverable" notification when their e-mail is bounced by one of the Mail Servers along the way. Often however, bouncing is used to try to return unwanted nuisance e-mails (Spam), but these almost always have a faked sender address so the bounce fails and the message ends up simply being deleted. |
| Broadband | A technical term that has recently been given a new meaning by ignorant marketing abuse. The new meaning is "fast, permanent connection to the Internet". Obviously, "fast" is a relative term, and most marketing of broadband to consumers assumes a comparison with "slow" Modem dial-up connections. "Always on" is both a boon and a bain. Your broadband-connected computer(s) that are "always on" are also potentially "always hackable", so defences such as an effective Firewall become even more important. BECTa recommends that all UK schools should now plan to have broadband Internet access (with at least 2Mbs symmetrical, i.e. outbound as well as inbound) by 2006, with secondary schools "ideally" having an 8Mbs connection. If you believe the hype that Britain is at the forefront of emerging technologies, take note that many Japanese and Korean homes and businesses already have 10Mbs or better - how the other half lives! See also Contention, DSL. |
| Broken Link | A Link that doesn't work, usually because the linked Site has changed since the link was created. The Web changes very quickly; thousands of Web Pages appear and disappear every day. The more enlightened sites try to ensure that links to all their deleted pages will still work, by redirecting them to a suitable alternative. |
| Browser | You are using one right now to read this Web Page. A browser is the type of computer Application needed to read Web and Intranet pages. It converts ("Renders") HTML Web Pages into words and pictures and, if it is capable and the page demands it, audio and video as well. Although "pure" HTML is standardised in an official specification (see W3C), some of the specification is open to interpretation, and much of the HTML on the Internet is not written accurately to any of the standards anyway. Different browsers cope with these problems differently, with the result that quite often a Web page will look different in different browsers. There are lots and lots of browsers, however most people use Internet Explorer because Microsoft has cleverly included it with every Windows version since Windows 95. At a slight tangent, it is interesting to note that this stroke of marketing genius has been challenged as "unfair" in the US courts, at vast expense and to no significant avail (except to the lawyers). One might question the rationality of "anti-trust" laws in a society built on the power of multi-nationals? The irony is that Internet Explorer has been, for several years, one of the poorest browsers available. If you have never tried another browser, we recommend you do - start with Firefox, and get someone who knows their way around it to show you why it is so much better. Firefox is free, and very easy to install. |
| BTW | By The Way - Shorthand often used by people who regularly contribute to Internet discussions such as Newsgroups. |
| Bug | A fault in a computer program. Not to be confused with Web Bug. See also "Beta". |
| Bug-free | Bug-free is an unknown concept in the commercial Software publishing industry. |
| Burn | Jargon term for the process of creating a CD or DVD using a CD or DVD-Writer ("burner"), as opposed to mass production using a press. CD-Writers do not actually "burn" the CD, but they do use a high precision laser to melt the CD surface and affect its reflectivity. |
| Byte | A block of 8 Bits. Using Binary a byte can have one of 256 different values (2 to the power of 8 = 256) which translate into decimal as numbers 0 to 255, which is why the number 255 crops up a lot in computing. |