~ Computer Word Of The Week ~

[MysteRy]

Shadow

1. A shadow is a darkness that appears when portions of an object are blocked. Term may also be used to describe making a portion of a graphic darker or giving it dimension by adding a dark section off centered from the original text or image.

2. Shadowing can also refer to anyone or anything following someone without their knowledge.

[MysteRy]

Column

1. A column is a vertical series of cells in a chart, table, or spreadsheet. Below is an example of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with column headers A, B, C, D, E, and F. As you can see from the picture below, column F is the highlighted column in red and the selected cell is in column B.



2. When referring to a newspaper or magazine a column or periodical is a regular featured opinion done by a columnist. For example a column related to computers could cover computer related questions, new technology, and other computer related information the columnist enjoys.

[MysteRy]

Optical scanner



An optical scanner is a hardware input device that allows a user to take an image or text and convert it into a digital file, allowing the computer to read or display the scanned object. A scanner can be connected to a computer using USB, Firewire, Parallel, or a SCSI port. The picture shows an example of a flatbed photo scanner, the Epson V300.

Other scanners include: sheetfed scanner, which is a scanner that scans paper fed into it, handheld scanner, which is a scanner that is held and drag over a page to scan it, and a card scanner, which is a small scanner capable of scanning business cards.

[MysteRy]

Tape

A magnetically thin coated piece plastic wrapped around wheels capable of storing data. Tape is much less expensive than other storage mediums but commonly a much slower solution that is commonly used for backup.

Today, tape has mostly been abandoned for faster and more reliable solutions like disc drives, hard drives, and flash drives. In the image to the right, is a picture and example of magnetic tape taken by KENPEI and shared under the creative commons.

[MysteRy]

VNC

Short for Virtual Network Computing, VNC was first developed by Quentin Stafford-Fraser at AT&T and enables users to control another computer remotely. What makes VNC a great utility is that it enables users to control remotely numerous computers even if they are not running the same platform. For example, a user may be using Microsoft Windows and remotely connect to other Windows computers, Linux computers, or even Mac computers. Even better is that this utility can be used for free.

[MysteRy]

MCGA

Short for Multi-Color Graphics Array or Memory Controller Gate Array, MCGA is a graphics system built into computers manufactured during the 1980s.

[MysteRy]

Predator

A predator or online predator is a term used to describe a person on the Internet who preys on, destroys, or otherwise victimizes another person or company on the Internet.

[MysteRy]

View

1. In general, view refers to seeing an object or the contents of a file on a computer. For example, you are currently viewing this web page to learn more about view.

- Viewing the contents of a file.
- How to view a computer file extension.

2. With Linux, view or vi is a command that allows you to view and edit files. See the vi command page for further information on this command.

3. View is also used to describe the angle of view with a camera or camera lens.

[MysteRy]

Least significant character

Sometimes abbreviated as LSC, the least significant character is a character located at the far right of a string.

[MysteRy]

Range

1. In general, a range refers to a series of value between two other values. For example, the range between 1 and 5 is 2, 3, and 4.

2. When referring to a spreadsheet, the range or cell range is a group of cells within a row or column. For example, in the formula "=sum(A1:A10)", the cells in column A1 through A10 are the range of cells that are added together. This type of range is referred to as an adjacent range since all of the cells are together. If you wanted to add cells that were in a non-adjacent range each individual cell would need to be in the formula. For example, in the formula "=sum(A1+B2+C3)", the cells A1, B2, and C3 are added together.

[MysteRy]

Azerty

French speaking typewriter and computer keyboard layout named after the top left six characters, a, z, e, r, t, and y. Below is a basic example of the layout of the azerty keyboard.

[MysteRy]

Mosaic

1. Mosaic is the first widely used graphical World Wide Web browser developed and first released on April 22, 1993 by the NCSA with the help of Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina. The development and support of Mosaic was officially discontinued on January 7, 1997. The picture is an example of what Mosaic 1.0 looked like. Image credit goes to NCSA/University of Illinois.

2. A mosaic is a description of smaller images, stones, glass, or other material that make up a bigger image. In the picture below is an example of a mosaic picture made up of smaller images using AndreaMosaic.

[MysteRy]

Hypermedia

Hypermedia is a term coined by Ted Nelson in 1965 that expands on the idea of hypertext by not just linking to a document through text or graphics, but sound, video, virtual reality or other multimedia objects.

[MysteRy]

OS/2

Jointly developed by Microsoft and IBM to operate with Intel microprocessors, OS/2 was originally a 16-bit operating system that was designed to work with 286 processors and first introduced in 1987. OS/2 later became a graphical interface similar to Windows, but also supported a command line. In fact, many OS/2 and DOS commands are the same.

In 1992, a new 32-bit version was released for 386 and above PCs and was solely an IBM product. Later in 1994, IBM released a version it called OS/2 Warp that included Internet access and additional features. At the same time, Microsoft was working on OS/2 version 3.0; however, it later became Microsoft Windows NT.

OS/2 never became as popular as the other Microsoft operating systems, and software developers never created a substantial number of programs to run primarily under OS/2 even though some computer experts say later versions of OS/2 were superior to Windows.

IBM officially announces on July 14, 2005 that all sales of OS/2 will end on December 23, 2005 and that all support from IBM for OS/2 will end on December 16, 2005.

[MysteRy]

Lux

The lux is the measurement of light output; more specifically, one lux is equal to one lumen per square meter. The symbol for lux is lx.