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E-commerce
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E-mail
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Emoticon
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Encryption
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Ethernet
E-commerce
E-commerce (electronic-commerce) refers to business over the
Internet. Web sites such as Amazon.com, Buy.com, and eBay are
all e-commerce sites. The two major forms of e-commerce are
Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B).
While companies like Amazon.com cater mostly to consumers,
other companies provide goods and services exclusively to
other businesses. The terms "e-business" and "e-tailing" are
often used synonymously with e-commerce. They refer to the
same idea; they are just used to confuse people trying to
learn computer terms.
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E-mail
It's hard to remember what our
lives were like without e-mail. Ranking up there with the Web
as one of the most useful features of the Internet, e-mail has
become one of today's standard means of communication.
Billions of messages are sent each year. If you're like most
people these days, you probably have more than one e-mail
address. After all, the more addresses you have, the more
sophisticated you look...
E-mail is part of the standard TCP/IP set of protocols.
Sending messages is typically done by SMTP (Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol) and receiving messages is handled by POP3
(Post Office Protocol 3), or IMAP (Internet Message Access
Protocol). IMAP is the newer protocol, allowing you to view
and sort messages on the mail server, without downloading them
to your hard drive.
Though e-mail was originally developed for sending simple text
messages, it has become more robust in the last few years.
Now, HTML-based e-mail can use the same code as Web pages to
incorporate formatted text, colors, and images into the
message. Also, documents can be attached to e-mail messages,
allowing files to be transferred via the e-mail protocol.
However, since e-mail was not originally designed to handle
large file transfers, transferring large documents (over 3 MB,
for example) is not allowed by most mail servers. So remember
to keep your attachments small!
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Emoticon
These are the little text-based
faces and objects that you often see in e-mail and online
chat. They help give the reader a sense of the writer's
feelings behind the text. For example, the classic =) face
shows that the writer is happy about something or that his
message in good humor. The =P face is used to show frustration
or to say "Whatever..." Emoticons can also be used to create
real-world objects. For example, a @-->-->--- is supposed to
be a long-stemmed rose, which you can use to show affection --
pretty lame if you ask me.
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Encryption
This is the coding or scrambling of information
so that it can only be decoded and read by someone who has the
correct decoding key. Encryption is used in secure Web sites
as well as other mediums of data transfer. If a third party
were to intercept the information you sent via an encrypted
connection, they would not be able to read it. So if you are
sending a message over the office network to your co-worker
about how much you hate your job, your boss, and the whole
dang company, it would be a good idea to make sure that you
send it over an encrypted line.
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Ethernet
Just to be clear, the first syllable is pronounced like
"Heath" as in Heath Bar?, not like "Beth" as in Bethany. I
found this out the hard way (ridiculing laughter), but at
least you don't have to. Ethernet is the most common type of
connection computers use in a local area network (LAN). An
Ethernet port looks much like a regular phone jack, but it is
slightly wider. This port can be used to connect your computer
to another computer, a local network, or an external DSL or
cable modem.
Two widely-used forms of Ethernet are 10BaseT and 100BaseT. In
a 10BaseT Ethernet connection, data transfer speeds can reach
10 mbps (megabits per second) through a copper cable. In a
100BaseT Ethernet connection, transfer speeds can get up to
100 mbps. There is also a new technology called "Gigabit"
Ethernet, where data transfer rates peak at 1000 mbps. Now
that's fast.
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