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blog The word blog is a blend of the words web and log because early blogs were called web-logs. The word blog is a noun which means a website or section of a website where journal style entries are displayed in reverse chronological order. Blog is also a verb meaning to make a blog entry. Blogs often focus on a specific topic (gadgets, cooking, politics, motherhood) or they can be an online diary. There are some blogs that have become commercial websites that provide news on a particular topic attracting millions of readers each month. Other blogs are user-submitted and often features of large social networking sites such as MySpace. Still another type of blog is a corporate blog or a blog written by someone who is a public figure in a large organization or company. And yet another type of blog that’s really grown in popularity over the last year or so, is blogs that are features of websites for traditional media. The first web log was started by Justin Hall in 1994. The idea was to post personal thoughts on a topic and then link to other sites with a similar interest. In that way, readers could browse between sites. Readers could also post comments about the blogs which is still an important part of blogs today. The search engine technorati searches and catalogues blogs only. As of January 2008 their index includes over 110 million blogs and the number of blogs in the Internet might actually be far greater than that because there is some controversy over whether or not technoranti has been able to index blogs that are part of a larger social networking site properly. It should be noted, however, that not all of them are currently active. Either way, the blogosphere is absolutely huge.   Database Driven Sites Where a database of information is used to control the content and functionality of the site.   Gmail Gmail is Google's free email service and online mail client. A Gmail account provides a robust spam filter, interesting conversation categorization options, enormous storage capacity, and much more.   MAC Address MAC is short for Media Access Control. A MAC address is a unique name given to each node on a network. A node on a network refers to any point on the network where data can be routed and therefore switches, modems and VOIP phones as well as PCs (or "clients") have MAC addresses.   NAS NAS is an acronym for Network Attached Server. A NAS drive is essentially a hard disk drive with a built in network interface. As the term indicates, NAS drives are used for data storage. A NAS drive is directly connected to a network through a router. NAS drives are a practical file storage solution because data is kept at a single location and is made available to all clients on the network. The clients on the network can be computers running Windows, Linux or Mac OS, or they can be devices like a printer. NAS drives are being used by large corporations and home networks alike, to store, share and make back-up copies of data. NAS drives offer the following benefits: Store data in a centralized location Increase network performance Easily share data between different clients Easy to use and administer The computers connected to the network don’t need to be on in order to access data owned by that user   Protected Mode (Vista) Protected Mode is an Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) setting, only available with Vista. It has been designed to defend systems against ‘elevation of privilege’ attacks. It prevents hackers from getting access to a system and installing unwanted programs or using/ deleting information. With Protected Mode enabled, IE7 cannot modify user files and settings without user confirmation. With Protected Mode enabled, the user is required to confirm any kind of activity that tries to install new programs on the computer. “Are you sure you really want to do this?” Vista + IE7 in Protected Mode will ask. The fact that user consent is required for permitting actions of this kind ensures that the possibility of automated scripts running or unwanted applications being installed, is reduced drastically. Protected Mode gives you an indication of what a particular website is trying to do, so that you have a chance of stopping it and checking its trustworthiness before you proceed with the action. By default it is enabled for all security zones excluding the Trusted Zone.   proxy server Proxy servers receive requests from client computers to access websites and return results while masquerading as both the client to the visited website, and as the server to the client computer. They effectively make it so the client computer only interacts with the proxy server to access the whole Internet. While proxy servers enable you to surf anonymously, they may slow down your online experience.   RAID RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independant Disks. The idea of RAID was first thought of at the University California at Berkeley in 1987. It's purpose was to improve storage subsystem reliability and performance. The concept initially consisted of clustering small inexpensive disk drives into an array such that the array could appear to the system as a single large expensive drive. The result of this initial testing found that the array of drives could actually deliver the same or better performance than the traditional individual hard drive. However, there was a problem with this implementation. The resulting Mean Time Before Failure of the array was actually reduced due to the probability of any one drive of the array failing. As a result of this finding, the Berkeley scientists proposed five levels or methods of RAID to provide a balance of performance and data protection.   ReadyBoost ReadyBoost is a feature of Microsoft Windows Vista that uses a high speed USB flash drive to cache data. Using ReadyBoost is not quite the same as adding physical memory.       ReadyBoost works on the principle that a computer can access memory from the USB much faster than it can access from the hard drive. ReadyBoost works on the ‘intelligent memory management’ of Windows Superfetch. When a removable memory device is plugged into a port on the system, Vista checks to see if the card is fast enough to work with ReadyBoost. Once this is confirmed, the system asks you if you want to use the card to speed up performance. Part of the USB can be allocated for memory and the rest can be used for storing files.     RSS RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Many weblogs and news sites syndicate their content through RSS feeds. When a site is updated with new information, the RSS feed displays this information and spreads it to anyone who has subscribed to the feed. The gadget on the sidebar can take a feed from any site that offers RSS and then display new headlines periodically. Anyone can subscribe to a feed for free. Feeds are like a quick link back to a website; only the link actually represents the whole of an article. Why do sites offer RSS feeds? They want return visitors, and by giving you their content everyday through email or your favorite RSS reader, you will likely return. Most sites allow you to subscribe via email, which gives their content the best exposure over time. You can also click on the RSS feed link they provide on their site to be taken to their actual feed. From there, you will have options to subscribe depending on which Internet browser you are using.   SSID An SSID is probably best thought of as the name of your network. All PCs connected to the network use that name. SSID stands for Service Set Identifier and it is a 32 bit character that is attached to the header of any packet sent over that network. That is how you can search for the network when you first set it up. The vast majority of wireless routers ship with factory default settings that include a known SSID. For that reason, anyone in your local area who happens to have purchased and set up the same router make and model will have the same settings (if they retain the default settings). Anyone looking for a free Internet ride can also search very easily for known product default SSIDs.   UAC UAC, which might seem like an annoyance, is actually one of the most important security features of Windows Vista. It is a powerful component of Windows Security System (WSC) that lets you exert better control over the continued well-being of your system. The UAC is a dialog box that continually pops up and asks you for your permission (or password depending on your user account setting) whenever you try to adjust a setting or install a program. The idea is that viruses cannot make changes to your system without you getting to know about it. The UAC is modeled on similar features found in Mac OS X and UNIX. It ensures that your system is safer, even though you may feel irritation at having to give permission or type in your password every time.