The language of silicon dreams and stack overflows.
A small, dark purple or black berry produced by bramble plants of the genus Rubus, known for their sweet-tart flavor and nutritional value. The term also refers to the BlackBerry smartphone, a mobile device that dominated the business market in the 2000s with its physical QWERTY keyboard and secure email capabilities.
An early search engine (launched 1997) that used natural language processing, allowing users to ask questions in full sentences rather than typing keywords; now known as Ask.com after Jeeves was phased out.
A hard, lustrous metallic element (atomic number 27) that is typically blue or silvery in appearance. It's used in alloys, batteries, pigments, and catalysts, and its compounds are prized for creating deep blue colors in ceramics and glass.
A telephone with a circular dial containing finger holes for each digit (0-9); users dialed by inserting their finger in the appropriate hole and rotating clockwise until it stopped, releasing to send each digit. Rotary phones dominated from the 1950s through the 1980s.
A telephone feature that alerts a user to an incoming call while they are already on another call, allowing them to pause or switch between conversations. The caller typically hears a beep or tone to indicate the second incoming call.
Optical Character Recognition—technology that converts images of text into actual text, often useful until it reads every third word wrong.
An Apple obsessive who will buy literally any product with a lowercase 'i' prefixed to it, regardless of price or functionality. Brand loyalty taken to absurd levels by someone who's convinced the magical letter costs an extra $500.
A tiny, independently deployable piece of software that handles one specific function, allowing you to scale complexity until nobody understands the system anymore.
The forgotten grandfather of Team Fortress 2—a game that technically existed but nobody remembers because it didn't have cosmetic hats, which is apparently the only reason anyone plays the sequel. It's the video game equivalent of your parent's first attempt at something.
A wireless telecommunications device that receives short text messages, widely used from the 1980s through early 2000s before mobile phones became ubiquitous. Pagers operated on a one-way system where users received messages but could not directly reply.
A portable personal CD player produced by Sony starting in 1984 that played compact discs and was popular through the 1990s and early 2000s. It represented a major shift from Walkman cassette players to digital music.
A social networking website founded in 2003 that allowed users to create customizable profiles, share music, and connect with friends. MySpace was the dominant social network before Facebook's rise and pioneered features like customizable profiles and band pages.
A device that converts digital data from a computer into analog signals for transmission over telephone or cable lines, and reconverts incoming analog signals back into digital data. The term is a portmanteau of 'modulator-demodulator.'
A casual, rounded sans-serif font created by Microsoft in 1994 that mimics comic book lettering. Once ubiquitous in casual digital communication, it has become widely mocked by designers for its overuse and perceived unprofessionalism.
A computer program that displays moving images or patterns on a monitor when the device is idle, originally designed to prevent burn-in on older CRT screens. Modern screensavers are primarily decorative since this technical problem no longer exists.
A small, removable magnetic storage device used from the 1970s through early 2000s to store and transfer computer data, typically holding 1.44 MB on the ubiquitous 3.5-inch version. The name derives from the flexible plastic coating that originally housed the magnetic medium.
The total amount of time a person spends looking at screens—phones, tablets, computers, TVs—measured in hours and minutes per day. Screen time has become a metric tracked by devices to raise awareness of digital consumption habits.
To insert previously copied content into a new location; in computing, the action of retrieving data from the clipboard and placing it into a document or application. As a noun, a soft, moist substance.
Moving your company's entire infrastructure to someone else's computers while hoping they don't lose everything.
A tool consisting of a handle attached to a head with a sharp, pointed end on one side and a flat or slightly curved end on the other, used for breaking through hard surfaces like rock, ice, or compacted earth. Essential in mining, construction, and archaeological excavation.
A brand name for a disc-shaped robotic vacuum cleaner that autonomously navigates around floors to clean carpets and hard surfaces. The term is often used generically to refer to any robot vacuum, though Roomba is the market leader.
A funnel-shaped or T-shaped device used in metallurgy and foundry work to direct and control the flow of molten metal into molds, or in plumbing, an open channel or tank that separates incoming water pipes from outgoing drainage pipes to prevent siphoning.
A large optical disc format (12 inches in diameter) that emerged in the late 1970s as a high-quality alternative to VHS, offering superior picture and sound but requiring expensive players and limited content availability. Laserdiscs never achieved mainstream adoption despite their technical superiority.
A compact, decorative rotary telephone designed for home use, typically featuring a curved shape and often available in pastel colors. Popular from the 1960s through the 1980s, it was marketed as a stylish alternative to standard black telephone models.