Computer & IT Questions & Answers

Social networking has brought about a new trend called contact scraping, where an online company with access to a person’s mail account goes through the contact list and sends out an invitation to all to join the site. Once a person enters his / her credentials, like user name or password, the company sweeps through the contact list. The company …

The term cloud computing with reference to IT is a service offered by a third party – typically a Technology Services Provider – and offered on subscription basis by leveraging the internet. The key proposition is to move away from expensive, capex heavy, on-premises options to affordable, cost-efficient arrangements that are offered on a one-to-many basis. It is a misperception …

Captcha is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to differentiate between computers and humans. A Captcha Security Code is an image of letters that a person must type in to match the Captcha image they see. It is a type of challenge response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. …

Every device connected to the public Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. IP addresses consist of four numbers separated by periods (also called a ‘dotted-quad’) and look something like 127.0.0.1. Since these numbers are usually assigned to internet service providers within region-based blocks, an IP address can often be used to identify the …

It is a website where a couple posts information about their upcoming or recent wedding. After the wedding, pictures and posts are uploaded; it could also be interactive. It is a relatively new concept and includes information as to how the couple met, invitations to friends and relatives, wedding clothes of the bride and groom, the ‘wedding album’ photo gallery …

A thumbo is an error made while typing a text message on a mobile phone – basically a mix of thumb and typo. Typo is an old word which means a mistake made while typing. A related word is speako, used to indicate mistakes made while dictating text.

SoLoMos are mobile phone applications that combine social networking and location data. SoLoMo is a combination of the words social, location or local, and mobile. These applications concentrate on local areas making geo-local engagement possible.

A semaphore (pronounced as sehm uh fawr, invented by Edsger Dijkstra) in computer science is a classic way of protecting shared resources. In multi-programming environments like Unix systems, semaphores are a technique for coordinating or synchronising activities in which multiple processes compete for the same operating system resources. A process needing the resource checks the semaphore to determine the resource’s …

A google bomb is an effort to inflate a website’s search ranking for a particular term. Google gives importance to pages linking to a particular page for ranking purposes. In case of Google bombing, pranksters use a phrase to link to a particular page from their sites multiple times, to push that page to the top of search results. One …

It’s a tiny fitness gadget which constantly monitors if you’re eating right, exercising enough and sleeping adequately. The rationale is to motivate people to lead a healthy lifestyle. The FitBit tracker is wireless and functions with the help of a motion sensor called accelerometer, which keeps tabs on movements. When a person walks by a wireless base station, the information …