.W

W3 (World Wide Web /WWW)
The graphical interface with which millions of users access Internet files that conform to the hypertext protocol (HTTP) The Web is the most accessible and widely used branch of the Internet.

WAG (Wild Ass Guess)
An acronym used in e-mail, online chat, and newsgroup postings.

WAI (What An Idiot)
An acronym used in online chat, e-mail, and newsgroup postings.

WAMBAM (Web Application Meets Brick And Mortar)
An acronym used to define the online efforts of traditional brick and mortar stores, such as BarnesandNoble.com and Kinkos.com.

Warez
Widely used in cracker subcultures to denote cracked version of commercial software, that is versions from which copy-protection has been stripped. Hackers recognize this term but don't use it themselves.

Webcasting
Using the Internet and the World Wide Web in particular, to broadcast information. Unlike typical surfing, which relies on a pull method of transferring Web pages, webcasting uses push technologies.

WebCrawler
One of the original popular search engines on the Web. It was one of the first indexes of World Wide Web pages by title and URL.

Web Developer
A person who from a technical standpoint, architecturally "builds" Web sites. Researches and provides through programming the means for a particular Web product to work. Not to be confused with the Web counterpart of Web designer.

Web jam
A Weblike layering of music, media, performers, audience, and the surrounding ecosystem into a rhythmic "jungle." The objective is to celebrate an expanded sense of nature inclusive of culture and technology. With roots in African American jazz and 1990's Rave culture, the Web jam takes an improvisational, "emergent" approach to cultural, political, and ecological systems. Ebon Fisher instigated the first Web jam, known as “Organism,” in the spring of 1993 in collaboration with 120 artists, musicians, and children from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Over 2,000 people attended jamming from 6 at night till 9 the next morning.

Web page (World Wide Web Page)
There are different usages of this term. The most technically correct usage means a single HTML file, which when viewed by a browser on the World Wide Web (WWW) could be several screen-dimensions long, meaning you would "scroll" to view contents that are off-screen. The size of a Web page varies greatly from system to system and depends largely on what your computer monitor's resolution is set at. Therefore the contents of a given HTML file which appears either as 2 or 10 or any amount of screens long, is considered a single Web page. The term Web page is also used to refer to an entire Web site. This usage pertains more to a collection of "pages" which are "housed" under one domain name. You may also hear it referred as a homepage, although a homepage is indeed a Web page it is not quite the same since a homepage is usually the starting point or front door to a lot more Web pages or Web site.

Web server
A computer that sends Web files from their publishers to Web users.

Wide area network (WAN)
A communications network that connects separate locations.

Wideband
A medium-capacity communications circuit/path. It usually implies a speed from 64Kbps to 1.544Mbps.

Windows NT
The most advanced version of the Windows operating system. Windows NT is a 32-bit operating system that supports preemptive multitasking.

There are actually two versions of Windows NT: Windows NT Server, designed to act as a server in networks, and Windows NT Workstation for stand-alone or client workstations.

Windows 2000
The latest version of Microsoft's evolving Windows operating system, previously called Windows NT 5.0.

Windows 95
A computer operating system built by Microsoft in 1995 that, unlike its previous operating systems, does not run on top of the company’s MS-DOS system built in the 1960s.

Windows 98
The 1998 update of Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system for personal computers.

Winsock (Windows Sockets)
A technical specification that defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application (such as an FTP client or a Gopher client) and the underlying TCP/IP protocol stack. The nomenclature is based on the Sockets applications programming interface model used in Berkeley UNIX for communications between programs.

WinZIP
The Windows program that helps you decompress most of the files you download from the Internet.WinZip brings the convenience of Windows to the use of ZIP files without requiring PKZIP and PKUNZIP. The new WinZIP Wizard makes unzipping easier than ever. WinZIP features built-in support for popular Internet file formats, including TAR, gzip, Unix compress, UUencode, BinHex, and MIME. ARJ, LZH, and ARC files are supported via external programs. WinZIP interfaces to most virus scanners.

Wireless application protocol (WAP)
An open standard for applications that use wireless communications.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The main standards body for the World Wide Web that establishes protocols for transmitting information over the Web.

Compiled by Amrita Ghosh
[email protected]

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