Final Exam Review

Communication Terms:

Selected Magazine terms

Adzine - A magazine primarily devoted to the advertising of comic books and collectibles as its first publishing priority as opposed to written articles.

Ashcan - A publisher's inhouse facsimile of a proposed new title. Most ashcans have black and white covers stapled to an existing coverless comic on the inside. Other ashcans are totally black and white.

Baxter Paper - A high quality, white, heavy paper used in the printing of some comics.

Bi-weekly - Published every two weeks.

Black Cover - Covers with a predominate use of black ink. The black ink has a tendency to show defects more readily than other ink colors. Because of this, high grade comics with black covers are highly prized by collectors.

Browning - (1) The aging of paper characterized by the ever- increasing level of oxidation characterized by darkening. (2) The level of paper deterioration one step more severe than tanning and one-step before brittleness.
Cameo - The brief appearance of one character in the strip of another.

Fanzine - An amateur fan publication.

Folio - A sheet of paper, folded once in the middle, making 2 leaves or 4 pages. 32 interior pages are made up of 8 folios. The centerfold, cover, and first wraparound are examples of folios.

Mylar(tm) - An inert, very hard, space age plastic used to make high quality protective bags and sleeves used for comic book storage. Mylar(tm) is a trademark of the Dupont Co.

Pulp - Cheaply produced magazine made from low grade newsprint. The term comes from the wood pulp that was used in the paper manufacturing process.

pooo - Abbreviation for "Pages Out Of Order," a rare bindery defect in which the cover from one comic is stapled to the interior pages of another comic

Revival - An issue that begins republishing a comic book character after a period of dormancy.

Sci-fi - Short for "Science Fiction."

Signatures - A large sheet of paper printed with four or a multiple of four pages. When folded it becomes a section of one comic book.

Splash Panel - (1) The first panel of a comic book story, usually larger than other panels and usually containing the title of the story. The splash panel may also contain artist and writer credits and the name of the feature. (2) An oversized interior panel.

Zine - Short for "Fanzine."

Radio Broadcasting Terms

Bias
A constant amplitude high frequency signal added to the recording signal to improve the signal to noise ratio and reduce the distortion of an analog tape recording.

Billboard
A short announcement to identify a sponsor at the beginning or end of a production element such as the news or traffic/weather reports.

Bug
Slang term for a DOG (Digitally Originated Graphic) permanent on screen logo.

Call Letters
The official name of the radio station in the USA. Also known as a station's callsign.
Cans
Slang for headphones.

CBS
Columbia Broadcasting System, an American television and radio network.

Closed Captioning
Text version of a programme's dialogue, overlayed on the screen by an equipped television set for the hearing impared.

Clutter
An excessive number of non-programme elements (such as commercials) appearing one after another.


Copy
The written material used in producing a PSA, promo, or commercial that is meant to be read out by the DJ or presenter.

Crash
When an announcement, jingle or graphic overlaps with a fixed point in the schedule (eg the news or a time signal), usually due to poor timing.

Crossfade
The technique where a DJ, producer or engineer fades out the out going track at the same time as fading in the new track.

Coverage
percentage of households that can tune into a radio station within the theoretical broadcast radius.

Cueing
Whilst the previous record was playing the DJ would attempt to find the beginning of the song on the next record. The DJ would place the needle down in approximately the right area then move the record back and forth Cueing on the turntable until the beginning of the song was found. When the previous song completed playing the DJ would introduce the next song and turn the record deck on and the record would quickly whirl up to speed with a characteristic distortion. This was later minimised by the use of a slip mat.

Dead air
The time on-air where there is no audible transmission. This silence can be down to any of the following:
* DJ, Producer or Engineer error
* Equipment error or failure
* Act of God
* Deliberate silence for remembrance.
DJ - Disc Jockey

Encryption
The scrambling of a signal to allow reception via a decoder only be specific viewers, eg after the payment of a fee.

Feedback
The noise produced when the amplified sound from an output (eg loudspeaker) is picked up by the input (eg microphone) feeding that speaker.

Hit The Post
Where a DJ continues to talk right up to the point where the vocals commence.


Jingle
A produced programming element usually in the form of vocals to accompanying music often produced in-house to identify the show, DJ or the station.

Soundbite
A small portion (usually one or two sentences) of an audio recording (often an interview) used to illustrate a news story in the words of the interviewee (c.f. a quotation from a politician).

Teaser
A part of a program played before the title sequence, usually featuring a cliff hanger or prefiguring the plot of the episode to follow.

Web terms


BOOLEAN LOGIC
Way to combine terms using "operators" such as "AND," "OR," "AND NOT" and sometimes "NEAR." AND requires all terms appear in a record. OR retrieves records with either term. AND NOT excludes terms. Parentheses may be used to sequence operations and group words. Always enclose terms joined by OR with parentheses. Which search engines have this?
See -REJECT TERM and FUZZY AND. Want a more extensive explanation of Boolean logic, with illustrations?

BROWSE
To follow links in a page, to shop around in a page, exploring what's there, a bit like window shopping. The opposite of browsing a page is searching it. When you search a page, you find a search box, enter terms, and find all occurrences of the terms throughout the site. When you browse, you have to guess which words on the page pertain to your interests. Searching is usually more efficient, but sometimes you find things by browsing that you might not find because you might not think of the "right" term to search by.

BROWSERS
Browsers are software programs that enable you to view WWW documents. They "translate" HTML-encoded files into the text, images, sounds, and other features you see. Microsoft Internet Explorer (called simply IE), Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, and Opera are examples of "graphical" browsers that enable you to view text and images and many other WWW features.

CACHE
In browsers, "cache" is used to identify a space where web pages you have visited are stored in your computer. A copy of documents you retrieve is stored in cache. When you use GO, BACK, or any other means to revisit a document, the browser first checks to see if it is in cache and will retrieve it from there because it is much faster than retrieving it from the server.

CACHED LINK
In search results from Google, Yahoo! Search, and some other search engines, there is usually a Cached link which allows you to view the version of a page that the search engine has stored in its database. The live page on the web might differ from this cached copy, because the cached copy dates from whenever the search engine's spider last visited the page and detected modified content. Use the cached link to see when a page was last crawled and, in Google, where your terms are and why you got a page when all of your search terms are not in it.

CASE SENSITIVE
Capital letters (upper case) retrieve only upper case. Most search tools are not case sensitive or only respond to initial capitals, as in proper names. It is always safe to key all lower case (no capitals), because lower case will always retrieve upper case.

CGI
"Common Gateway Interface," the most common way Web programs interact dynamically with users. Many search boxes and other applications that result in a page with content tailored to the user's search terms rely on CGI to process the data once it's submitted, to pass it to a background program in JAVA, JAVASCRIPT, or another programming language, and then to integrate the response into a display using HTML.

COOKIE
A message from a WEB SERVER computer, sent to and stored by your browser on your computer. When your computer consults the originating server computer, the cookie is sent back to the server, allowing it to respond to you according to the cookie's contents. The main use for cookies is to provide customized Web pages according to a profile of your interests. When you log onto a "customize" type of invitation on a Web page and fill in your name and other information, this may result in a cookie on your computer which that Web page will access to appear to "know" you and provide what you want. If you fill out these forms, you may also receive e-mail and other solicitation independent of cookies.

CRAWLER or WEBCRAWLER
Same as Spider.



DOWNLOAD
To copy something from a primary source to a more peripheral one, as in saving something found on the Web (currently located on its server) to diskette or to a file on your local hard drive.
EXTENSION or FILE EXTENSION
In Windows, DOS and some other operating systems, one or several letters at the end of a filename. Filename extensions usually follow a period (dot) and indicate the type of file. For example, this.txt denotes a plain text file, that.htm or that.html denotes an HTML file. Some common image extensions are picture.jpg or picture.jpeg or picture.bmp or picture.gif

FAVORITES
In the Internet Explorer browser, a means to get back to a URL you like, similar to Bookmarks.

FEED READER
A software package that enables you to easily read the XML code in which RSS feeds are written. Bloglines is currently the most popular feed reader but there are many competitors.

FRAMES
A format for web documents that divides the screen into segments, each with a scroll bar as if it were as "window" within the window. Usually, selecting a category of documents in one frame shows the contents of the category in another frame. To go BACK in a frame, position the cursor in the frame an press the right mouse button, and select "Back in frame" (or Forward).
You can adjust frame dimensions by positioning the cursor over the border between frames and dragging the border up/down or right/left holding the mouse button down over the border.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol. Ability to transfer rapidly entire files from one computer to another, intact for viewing or other purposes.

HEAD or HEADER (of HTML document)
The top portion of the HTML source code behind Web pages, beginning with and ending with . It contains the Title, Description, Keywords fields and others that web page authors may use to describe the page. The title appears in the title bar of most browsers, but the other fields cannot be seen as part of the body of the page. To view the portion of web pages in your browser, click VIEW, Page Source. In Internet Explorer, click VIEW, Source. Some search engines will retrieve based on text in these fields.
HISTORY, Search History
Available by using the combined keystrokes CTRL + H. You can set how many days your browser retains history in Edit Preferences, or in Tools Options.

HOST
Computer that provides web-documents to clients or users. See also server.

HTML
Hypertext Markup Language. A standardized language of computer code, imbedded in "source" documents behind all Web documents, containing the textual content, images, links to other documents (and possibly other applications such as sound or motion), and formatting instructions for display on the screen. When you view a Web page, you are looking at the product of this code working behind the scenes in conjunction with your browser. Browsers are programmed to interpret HTML for display.
HTML often imbeds within it other programming languages and applications such as SGML, XML, Javascript, CGI-script and more. It is possible to deliver or access and execute virtually any program via the WWW.
You can see HTML by selecting the View pop-down menu tab, then "Document Source."

HYPERTEXT
On the World Wide Web, the feature, built into HTML, that allows a text area, image, or other object to become a "link" (as if in a chain) that retrieves another computer file (another Web page, image, sound file, or other document) on the Internet. The range of possibilities is limited by the ability of the computer retrieving the outside file to view, play, or otherwise open the incoming file. It needs to have software that can interact with the imported file. Many software capabilities of this type are built into browsers or can be added as "plug-ins."

INTERNET (Upper case I)
The vast collection of interconnected networks that all use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from the ARPANET of the late 60’s and early 70’s. An "internet" (lower case i) is any computers connected to each other (a network), and are not part of the Internet unless the use TCP/IP protocols. An "intranet" is a private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. An intranet may be on the Internet or may simply be a network.
IP Address or IP Number
(Internet Protocol number or address). A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g. 165.113.245.2
Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP address. If a machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet. Most machines also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.
ISP or Internet Service Provider
A company that sells Internet connections via modem (examples: aol, Mindspring - thousands of ISPs to choose from; not easy to evaluate). Faster, more expensive Internet connectivity is available via cable or DSL.

JAVA
A network-oriented programming language invented by Sun Microsystems that is specifically designed for writing programs that can be safely downloaded to your computer through the Internet and immediately run without fear of viruses or other harm to our computer or files. Using small Java programs (called "Applets"), Web pages can include functions such as animations, calculators, and other fancy tricks. We can expect to see a huge variety of features added to the Web using Java, since you can write a Java program to do almost anything a regular computer program can do, and then include that Java program in a Web page. For more information search any of these jargon terms in the Webopedia.

JAVASCRIPT
A simple programming language developed by Netscape to enable greater interactivity in Web pages. It shares some characteristics with JAVA but is independent. It interacts with HTML, enabling dynamic content and motion.

KEYWORD(S)
A word searched for in a search command. Keywords are searched in any order. Use spaces to separate keywords in simple keyword searching. To search keywords exactly as keyed (in the same order), see PHRASE.

LINK
The URL imbedded in another document, so that if you click on the highlighted text or button referring to the link, you retrieve the outside URL. If you search the field "link:", you retrieve on text in these imbedded URLs which you do not see in the documents.

LISTSERVERS
A discussion group mechanism that permits you to subscribe and receive and participate in discussions via e-mail. Blogs and RSS feeds provide some of the communication functionality of listservers.

META-SEARCH ENGINE
Search engines that automatically submit your keyword search to several other search tools, and retrieve results from all their databases. Convenient time-savers for relatively simple keyword searches (one or two keywords or phrases in " "). See Meta-Search Engines page for complete descriptions and examples.

NEWSGROUP
A discussion group operated through the Internet. Not to be confused with LISTSERVERS which operate through e-mail.

PERSONAL PAGE
A web page created by an individual (as opposed to someone creating a page for an institution, business, organization, or other entity). Often personal pages contain valid and useful opinions, links to important resources, and significant facts. One of the greatest benefits of the Web is the freedom it as given almost anyone to put his or her ideas "out there." But frequently personal pages offer highly biased personal perspectives or ironical/satirical spoofs, which must be evaluated carefully. The presence in the page's URL of a personal name (such as "jbarker") and a ~ or % or the word "users" or "people" or "members" very frequently indicate a site offering personal pages.

PACKET, PACKET JAM
When you retrieve a document via the WWW, the document is sent in "packets" which fit in between other messages on the telecommunications lines, and then are reassembled when they arrive at your end. This occurs using TCP/IP protocol. The packets may be sent via different paths on the networks which carry the Internet. If any of these packets gets delayed, your document cannot be reassembled and displayed. This is called a "packet jam." You can often resolve packet jams by pressing STOP then RELOAD. RELOAD requests a fresh copy of the document, and it is likely to be sent without jamming.
PDF or .pdf or pdf file
Abbreviation for Portable Document Format, a file format developed by Adobe Systems, that is used to capture almost any kind of document with the formatting in the original. Viewing a PDF file requires Acrobat Reader, which is built into most browsers and can be downloaded free from Adobe.

PHRASE
More than one KEYWORD, searched exactly as keyed (all terms required to be in documents, in the order keyed). Enclosing keywords in quotations " " forms a phrase in AltaVista, , and some other search tools. Some times a phrase is called a "character string."

PLUG-IN
An application built into a browser or added to a browser to enable it to interact with a special file type (such as a movie, sound file, Word document, etc.)

SCRIPT
A script is a type of programming language that can be used to fetch and display Web pages. There are may kinds and uses of scripts on the Web. They can be used to create all or part of a page, and communicate with searchable databases. Forms (boxes) and many interactive links, which respond differently depending on what you enter, all require some kind of script language. When you find a question marke (?) in the URL of a page, some kind of script command was used in generating and/or delivering that page. Most search engine spiders are instructed not to crawl pages from scripts, although it is usually technically possible for them to do so (see Invisible Web for more information).

SERVER, WEB SERVER
A computer running that software, assigned an IP address, and connected to the Internet so that it can provide documents via the World Wide Web. Also called HOST computer. Web servers are the closest equivalent to what in the print world is called the "publisher" of a print document. An important difference is that most print publishers carefully edit the content and quality of their publications in an effort to market them and future publications. This convention is not required in the Web world, where anyone can be a publisher; careful evaluation of Web pages is therefore mandatory. Also called a "Host."

SERVER-SIDE
Something that operates on the "server" computer (providing the Web page), as opposed to the "client" computer (which is you or someone else viewing the Web page). Usually it is a program or command or procedure or other application causes dynamic pages or animation or other interaction.
SHTML, usually seen as .shtml
An file name extension that identifies web pages containing SSI commands.

SITE or WEB-SITE
This term is often used to mean "web page," but there is supposed to be a difference. A web page is a single entity, one URL, one file that you might find on the Web. A "site," properly speaking, is an location or gathering or center for a bunch of related pages linked to from that site. For example, the site for the present tutorial is the top-level page "Internet Resources." All of the pages associated with it branch out from there -- the web searching tutorial and all its pages, and more. Together they make up a "site." When we estimate there are 5 billion web pages on the Web, we do not mean "sites." There would be far fewer sites.

TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) -- This is the suite of protocols that defines the Internet. Originally designed for the UNIX operating system, TCP/IP software is now available for every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet, your computer must have TCP/IP software. See also IP Address.

TELNET
Internet service allowing one computer to log onto another, connecting as if not remote.

TITLE (of a document)
The official title of a document from the "meta" field called title. The text of this meta title field may or may not also occur in the visible body of the document. It is what appears in the top bar of the window when you display the document and it is the title that appears in search engine results. The "meta" field called title is not mandatory in HTML coding. Sometimes you retrieve a document with "No Title" as its supposed title; this is caused when the meta-title field is left blank.
In Alta Vista and some other search tools, title: search also matches on the "meta" field, which contains document descriptors not displayed on the Web. See also LIMITING TO A FIELD.

TRUNCATION
In a search, the ability to enter the first part of a keyword, insert a symbol (usually *), and accept any variant spellings or word endings, from the occurrence of the symbol forward. (E.g., femini* retrieves feminine, feminism, feminism, etc.) Which search engines have this?
URL
Uniform Resource Locator. The unique address of any Web document. May be keyed in a browser's OPEN or LOCATION / GO TO box to retrieve a document. There is a logic the layout of a URL:
Anatomy of a URL:
Type of file (could say ftp:// or telnet://)
Domain name (computer file is on and its location on the Internet)
Path or directory on the computer to this file
Name of file, and its file extension (usually ending in .html or .htm)
http://
www.lib.berkeley.edu/
TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/
FindInfo.html

USENET
Bulletinboard-like network featuring thousands of "newsgroups." Google incorporates the historic file of Usenet Newsgroups (bzck to 1981) into its Google Groups. Yahoo Groups offers a similar service, but does not include the old "Usenet Newsgroups." Blogs are replacing some of the need for this type of community sharing and information exchange.

WIKI
A term meaning "quick" in Hawaiian, that is used for technology that gathers in one place a number of web pages focused on a theme, project, or collaboration. Wikis are generally used when users or group members are invited to develop, contribute, and update the content of the wiki. Wikis can be passworded in various ways to control or allow contributions. The most famous wiki is the Wikipedia.


WYSIWYG
(pronounced /ˈwɪziwɪg/[1] or /ˈwɪzɪwɪg/[2]), is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, used in computing to describe a system in which content during editing appears very similar to the final product.[3] It is commonly used for word processors, but has other applications, such as Web (HTML) authoring. The phrase was originally popularized by comedian Flip Wilson, whose character "Geraldine" would often say this to excuse her quirky behavior. The expression was later applied to computer applications as the technology became practical. Sometimes it is spelled phonetically, as "Wizywig" or "Wizzywig".


Essay question:

Explain Marshall McLuhan aphoristic phrase: "The Medium is The Message" in relation to the news paper report in 1938. Support you argument by using the given article.