JPEG Internet terms and Acronyms

AVI	audio/video interleave	Next time you see a video clip on your PC, there's a good chance that it's an AVI file. AVI is the file format used by Video for Windows, one of three video technologies used on personal computers. (The others are MPEG and QuickTime.) In AVI, picture and sound elements are stored in alternate interleaved chunks in the file.
CGI (Script)	*CGI Common Gateway Interface* CGI Computer Generated Image(s) CGI Computer Graphics Interface CGI Computer-Generated Imagery	The CGI standard lays down the rules for running external programs in a Web HTTP server. External programs are called gateways because they open up an outside world of information to the server.
FTP	File Transfer Protocol	This Internet protocol is used to copy files between computers--usually a client and an archive site. It's old-fashioned, it's a bit on the slow side, it doesn't support compression, and it uses cryptic Unix command parameters. But the good news is that you can download shareware or freeware apps that shield you from the complexities of Unix, and you can connect to FTP sites using a Web browser.
Gateway		A gateway is a program or piece of hardware that passes data between networks. You'll see this term most often when you either log in to an Internet site or when you're passing email between different servers.
GIF	Graphical Interchange Format	Most color images and backgrounds on the Web are GIF files. This compact file format is ideal for graphics that use only a few colors, and it was once the most popular format for online color photos. However, GIF has lost ground to the JPEG format when it comes to photos. GIF images are limited to 256 colors, but JPEGs can contain up to 16 million colors--and they can look almost as good as a photograph. CompuServe developed GIF in 1987, calling it GIF87, and two years later added new features such as interlacing, transparency, and animation to create the format known as GIF89a. People don't usually distinguish between the two GIF versions, so if someone refers to an image as a "GIF89" rather than simply a "GIF," it's probably animated.
HTML	HyperText Markup Language	As its name suggests, HTML is a collection of formatting commands that create hypertext documents--Web pages, to be exact. When you point your Web browser to a URL, the browser interprets the HTML commands embedded in the page and uses them to format the page's text and graphic elements. HTML commands cover many types of text formatting (bold and italic text, lists, headline fonts in various sizes, and so on), and also have the ability to include graphics and other nontext elements. Development and maintenance of HTML standards is coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium
HTTP	HyperText Transfer Protocol	The protocol used to transmit and receive all data over the World Wide Web. When you type a URL into your browser, you're actually sending an HTTP request to a Web server for a page of information (that's why URLs all begin with "http://"). HTTP1.1, the latest version, is currently undergoing revisions to make it work more efficiently with TCP/IP
IP	Internet Protocol	The Internet protocol defines how information gets passed between systems across the Internet.
IRC	Internet Relay Chat	IRC is a way of hooking up with other Net users to exchange written comments--live and in real time. To do this, you need an IRC client and an IRC server. Once connected to the server, you join a channel, or discussion group, which can include people from all over the world. IRC channels may hold discussions about anything under the sun (and some topics that shouldn't see the light of day). IRC can be accessed by a variety of downloadable software on both the PC and Mac.
ISMAP	Image Map
ISP	Internet Service Provider	. Once upon a time, you could only connect to the Internet if you belonged to a major university or had a note from the Pentagon. Not anymore: ISPs have arrived to act as your (ideally) user-friendly front end to all that the Internet offers. Most ISPs have a network of servers (mail, news, Web, and the like), routers, and modems attached to a permanent, high-speed Internet "backbone" connection. Subscribers can then dial into the local network to gain Internet access--without having to maintain servers, file for domain names, or learn Unix.
JPEG	Joint Photograhic Experts Group	This file format for color-rich images was developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee. JPEG compresses graphics of photographic color depth better than competing file formats like GIF, and it retains a high degree of color fidelity. This makes JPEG files smaller and therefore quicker to download. You can choose how much to compress a JPEG file, but since it is a lossy format, the smaller you compress the file, the more color information will be lost. JPEG files can be viewed by a variety of downloadable software on both the PC and Mac.
MIDI	Musical Instrument Digital Interface	Pronounced "middy," this connectivity standard enables you to hook together computers, musical instruments, and synthesizers to make and orchestrate digital sound. The term is used to describe the standard itself, the hardware that supports the standard, and files that store information that the hardware can use. MIDI files are like digital sheet music--they contain instructions for musical notes, tempo, and instrumentation--and are widely used in game soundtracks and recording studios.
MPEG	Moving Pictures Experts Group	MPEG is a standard for compressing sound and movie files into an attractive format for downloading--or even streaming--across the Internet. The MPEG-1 standard streams video and sound data at 150 kilobytes per second--the same rate as a single-speed CD-ROM drive--which it manages by taking key frames of video and filling only the areas that change between the frames. Unfortunately, MPEG-1 produces only adequate quality video, far below that of standard TV. MPEG-2 compression improves things dramatically. With MPEG-2, a properly compressed video can be shown at near-laserdisc clarity with a CD-quality stereo soundtrack. For that reason, modern video delivery mediums, such as digital satellite services and DVD, use MPEG-2.
TCP/IP	transmission control protocol/Internet protocol	These two protocols were developed by the U.S. military to allow computers to talk to each other over long distance networks. IP is responsible for moving packets of data between nodes. TCP is responsible for verifying delivery from client to server. TCP/IP forms the basis of the Internet, and is built into every common modern operating system (including all flavors of Unix, the Mac OS, and the latest versions of Windows).
URL	Uniform Resource Locator	URLs are the Internet equivalent of addresses. How do they work? Like other types of addresses, they move from the general to the specific (from zip code to recipient, so to speak). Take this URL, for example: http://www.cnet.com/Resources/index.html First you have the protocol: http:/ then the server address or domain: /www.cnet.com and finally the directory: /Resources/ in which the file index.html resides. Two debates rage: first, does the U stand for uniform or universal? Universal was the original definition of choice but was deemed by most to be too ambitious, and the more frequently used uniform was instated by the now-defunct URI Working Group. Second, is URL pronounced "you are ell," or does it rhyme with hurl? Both pronunciations are widely used.
WAV		Pronounced "wave," this is the Windows standard for waveform sound files. WAV files predictably have the extension .wav.
WWW	World Wide Web	Also known as the WWW, the W3, or most often simply as the Web, it originally developed by CERN labs in Geneva, Switzerland. Continuing development of the Web is overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium. The Web can be described (dryly) as a client/server hypertext system for retrieving information across the Internet. On the Web, everything is represented as hypertext (in HTML format) and is linked to other documents by their URLs. The Web encompasses its native http protocol, as well as ftp, Gopher, and Telnet.