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Monday, January 7, 2008

DON’T BE LEFT BEHIND BY TECHNO TERMS

As nonprofit leaders navigate the ever-changing world of high technology, they find themselves encountering terms that can be arcane or confusing.

At a recent national conference on nonprofit technology, several words and terms were explained for the benefit of those unfamiliar with them.

Among the words:

  • RSS. A format for storing online information in a way that makes that information readable on different kinds of software.
  • Aggregation. Gathering information from multiple Web sites, typically via RSS.
  • Blog. Originally short for “weblog,” a Web page that contains entries in reverse chronological order. An easy way for people to maintain a constantly updated Web presence.
  • Blogroll. A list of recommended sites that appears in the sidebar of a blog.
  • Mashup. A Web service or software tool that combines two or more tools to create a whole new service.
  • Moblogging. Short for “mobile blogging,” refers to posting blog updates from remote or mobile equipment, such as a cell phone or camera phone.
  • Newsreader. A device that gathers the news from multiple blogs or news sites via RSS, allowing readers to access all their news from a single Web site or program.
  • RSS feeds. A constantly updated version of the site’s latest content, in a form that be read by a newsreader or aggregator.

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