Geek is the new speak in 2010 and with the phenomenon of every second person on the street sporting some sort of techie gadget or other while throwing around words such as podcasts, blogs and Uncapped it can become overwhelming.
1. Bandwidth: This is the amount of data sent over a network connection.
2. ADSL: (Assymmetric Digital Subscriber Line): ADSL is a high speed Internet service that exceeds your conventional dial up modems. All that is required is an existing post-paid telephone line (meaning you get a phone bill at the end of the month), an ADSL modem and a computer.
3. Uncapped ADSL: Uncapped ADSL provides access to the Internet for downloading, gaming, watching and listening to music and videos and giving you the freedom to use the Internet as you like and when you like. It also means that you pay for your Internet service at a fixed, low price so there is no need to worry about topping up your data cap every month. MWEB was the first to launch affordable Uncapped ADSL in March 2010 retailing from R219 a month.
4. 3G Internet: 3G (Third Generation) devices allow you to experience Internet on the move minus the wiring and cables. Stay connected at home, the office or on holiday without the hassle of phone lines, cables or wiring. The device, which is the size of a flash drive is inserted into the USB port of your computer and relies on your local mobile phone network coverage to bring you wireless Internet.
5. Social Media: If you haven’t heard about applications such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn…Where have you been? Everyone is using social media- your kids, your auntie’s and uncles. Hey! If your gran can use email – its likely she has a Facebook account. Social media is a great way to stay connected with like minded people that share the same interests as you. Watch video clips on YouTube, follow your favourite celebrities on Twitter, network with professionals on LinkedIn and stay in touch with friends and family on Facebook.
6. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): SEO assists in marketing and promoting a website. The main aim of using it is to help improve the visibility of a website in search engines. The higher your web page is ranked on a search engine such as Google, for example, and the more frequent your site appears in the search result list, the more visitors you will get from the search engine. People mostly click on the top ranked pages first to get the necessary information that they require so you would want your website to be right on top of the list to give it a ‘presence.’
7. Tablet Computing: This is a portable computer with a touch screen – smaller than a laptop but larger than a smartphone device. Examples are the Apple iPad or the Blackberry Playbook.
8. Blog: Short for ‘web log’ a blog allows anyone with a computer or a smart phone device to be a publisher enabling them to write about interests, hobbies and opinions and display it to the world online. Think of it as a personal journal on a website.
9. Podcasting: When you upload video’s and/or sound byte files on the Internet for people to watch and listen. These files are usually available to download onto your computer.
10. Phishing: Derived from the term ‘fishing’ this is a method that online criminals use to get sensitive information such as financial and password information. To protect yourself from phishers always be wary of emails from banks that ask you to send them your password via email or click through links in their emails as they will never ask you to do that. Rather make that two minute phone call to your bank manager to find out whether the email is legit than risk losing your life savings. Always make sure that the websites that you enter are secure. You can check this by looking at the web address of your login page. If it reads “https” it means it is secure (the ‘s’ at the end of http stands for secure). Lastly, never agree to help someone transfer money overseas. No matter how appealing it may be to get 20% of a small fortune, you will get caught out.