Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Web Vocabulary #8

Webmasteran individual who manages a Web site. Depending on the size of the site, the Webmaster might be responsible for any of the following:


- Making sure that the Web server hardware and software is running properly

- Designing the Web site

- Creating and updating Web pages

- Replying to user feedback

- Creating CGI scripts

- Monitoring traffic through the site


The exponential growth of the World Wide Web has created an unprecedented demand for Webmasters.  Click here for source

WAISshort for Wide Area Information Server, and pronounced ways, a program for finding documents on the Internet. WAIS is rather primitive in its search capabilities.  Click here for source

Utility Computing – in a utility model, resources such as storage, bandwidth and computer processing time are charged for based upon how much you actually use over a given time period. This differs from more traditional models of web hosting where the web site owner purchases or leases a single server or space on a shared server irrespective and is charged a fixed fee.  Click here for source

Adobe AIR – The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is an interesting development that enables web designers and developers to use the technologies used to build web sites - HTML, Javascript, Flash - to build applications that are used on the desktop.

The types of applications being built with AIR are those that integrate closely with websites. Some are used to follow and analyse information published by web sites while others are used to updates web sites and blogs.

Because they run on the the desktop and not in a web browser they can offer more features and access and save files on the local hard drive or network. AIR also has built in database for storage and synchronisation so you can work offline and then synchsronise the information to your website at a later date.

At present AIR runs on Windows and Mac OS X. A version for Linux is available to developers and a version for mobile devices is in development.  Click here for source


Content Delivery Network (CDN) – a specialist network of computers optimized to deliver web sites, pictures, videos and software downloads to people visiting a web site in the quickest, most efficient way possible. Computers in the network work together to share the load of delivering these files and to enable companies to deal with large peaks in demand. CDN providers include companies such as Akimai, Coral CDN and Limelight Networks.

When delivering a web page from a web server to a user's machine, distance is a factor. The distance from a user's machine to the actual location where the files are hosted does have an impact on download speeds. Use of a CDN can reduce download delays by detecting country the user is located in and using files from the geographically nearest web server.  Click here for source

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