Glossary of Internet Service Related Terms

Obfuscation

Scrambling all symbolic code information such that no problem-domain information remains.

Object-Oriented Programming

Object-oriented programming is a programming technique that speeds the development of programs and makes them easier to maintain through the re-use of "objects" that have behaviors, characteristics, and relationships associated with them. The objects are organized into collections (also called class libraries), which are then available for building and maintaining applications. Each object is part of a class of objects, which are united via "inheritance" and share certain characteristics and relationships.

OCR

Optical Character Recognition. Software that translates a scanned image of printed or typewritten text into a plain text file that can be read by a word processor.

ODP - Open Directory Project

Open Directory Project, a volunteer based, human-edited search directory which produces search results for major engines like Google and AOL. See also: DMOZ.

Online/Offline

When you are logged onto a computer through your modem, you are said to be online. When you are using your computer but are not connected to a computer through your modem, you're said to be working offline.

Open Content

Information that is of public domain is open content. Specifically open content is copyrighted but made available to the public for reuse under license terms.

Open Source

Open source software is distributed with the source code freely available for alteration and customization. The idea behind open source software is the exact opposite of the old "too many cooks spoil the broth" adage. Theoretically, through the collective work of many programmers, the resulting software can become more useful and free of holes and bugs. One of the most well-known pieces of open source software is Linux.

Open Source Software

A brilliant programmer share-all, open source software is software where the programming code is available so users may read, change, and alter it. Many new programs are built from open source software as it can be altered in many ways. Linux operating system is a premier example of open source collaboration software.

Open Text

A large business-only directory. The URL is http://www.opentext.com

Operating System

The operating system or OS is a program, or a collection of programs, that manages all your computer's resources - disk drives, RAM, display screen - and controls how files are stored and retrieved.

Optimization

The changes that are made to the content and code of a web site in order to increase it's rankings in the results pages of search engines and directories. Examples: These changes may involve rewriting body copy, altering Title or Meta tags, removal of Frames or Flash content, and the seeking of incoming links.

Overture

Overture, formerly known as GoTo, is the most widely used pay per click search engine. Overture supplies results for some of the most popular search engines and search portals, including AltaVista, GO, HotBot, iWon, Lycos, MSN Search and NBCi.