Are you swamped in a sea of slang?  Awash in an ocean of gibberish? 
Caught in the bubbling vortex of techno-babble? You need:

a jargonauts'
guide to buzzwords

by stevececil@comcast.net   

BLOG 
A contraction of weB LOG, these (often very) personal journals are (for some reason) publicly accessible on the World Wide Web, where all the blah-blah-blogging leaves many readers blase about blogs and bloggers.

CPM
A planning technique for managing complex projects, the CRITICAL PATH METHOD isolates dominant variables (such as manufacturing or shipping activity) to forecast project duration and estimate completion dates.

CRM
Used by organizations looking to personalize buying experiences through mass customization, CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT software automates interactions and integrates information in real-time.

CRT
Modern plasma displays, big-screen and HDTVs are slim, elegant cousins of the original CATHODE RAY TUBE, which threw off such copious quantities of heat it was said to offer cheap radiation therapy to bystanders.

FTP
The two-way standard for transmitting files between workstations and servers (or vice versa) over the internet, FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL usually requires users to log on before uploading or downloading can begin.

GIF
This GRAPHICS INTERCHANGE FORMAT is a "loss-less" compression technique using a proprietary algorithm owned by Unisys, and being limited to 256 colors, it is best suited for line drawings and other graphic illustrations.

HTML
HYPER TEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE is the page description standard of the World Wide Web which controls formatting by marking text and graphic elements with coded tags, indicating how browsers should display them.

HTTP
The one-way standard for transmitting files from servers to browsers on the World Wide Web, HYPER TEXT TRANSFER PROTOCOL defines how messages are formatted and fetched in response to various commands.

JPEG
A working group within the International Standards Organization (ISO), the JOINT PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERTS GROUP wrote this "lossy" technique for compressing full-color photographs to about 5% of their original size.

LCD
Monochromatic LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAYS in watches look like crude blue/gray images on a whitish background, but in notebook computers with active-matrix technology they display high-resolution images in full color.

LED
An electronic device that lights up when electricity is passed through it, a LIGHT EMITTING DIODE is not a light bulb and will never burn out making it ideally suited for displaying small (usually red or green) images.

MP3
Audio layer 3 of the MPEG file format uses perceptual audio coding and psychoacoustic compression to remove irrelevant sound signals we can't hear, shrinking the file by a factor of 12:1 with no loss of sound quality.

MPEG
Another working group of the ISO is the MOVING PICTURE EXPERTS GROUP which developed this family of digital video compression formats (that store only changes from frame to frame, removing imperceptible data).

PCS
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) describes this suite of cellular technologies known as PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE as 1.) completely digital, and 2.) operating at 1900 MHz.

PDA
What do you get when you cross a cell phone with an organizer with an internet browser with a networked computer that recognizes your voice and handwriting?  That would be your PERSONAL DIGITAL ASSISTANT.

PDF
Developed by Adobe Systems, these files are pretty darn fast at capturing information from DTP apps in a PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT so they appear on the recipient's monitor exactly as they did on the sender's.

PIXEL
Having nothing to do with pixies, these PICture ELements represent a single point in a graphic image (comprising 3 convergent red, blue and green dots) and they determine the overall quality in the resolution of a display system.

URL
The UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR is your internet address (starting with http:// for a World Wide Web page) and is used by browsers to specify which files are to be fetched from which servers, and how best to fetch them.

WAP
Mobile phones, smart pagers, two-way radios and other handheld wireless devices like PDAs access information instantaneously via this secure specification known as the WIRELESS APPLICATION PROTOCOL.

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