Internet Abbreviations
E-mailers often keep their message brief by abbreviating frequently used phrases.
Below is the list of abbreviations commonly used on the Internet:
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ASL? = Age? Sex? Location? B4 = Before ВАК = Back At Keyboard BBL = Be Back Later BRB = Be Right Back BTW = By The Way FAQs = Frequently Asked Questions IMHO = In My Humble Opinion L8R = Later LOL = Laughs Out Loud MOF? = Male Or Female? NM or N/M = Never Mind (or Not Much) NP or N/P = No Problem OMG = Oh My God UR = Your / You're W/ = With AFAICT = As Far As I Can Tell AFAIK = As Far As I Know AIUI = As I Understand It BST = But Seriously Though BTDT = Been There, Done That CUL See you Later F2F = Face to Face FOAF = Friend Of A Friend FYI = For Your Information GA = Go Ahead |
GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out IME = In My Experience IMNSHO = In My Not-So-Humble Opinion IMO = In My Opinion IOW = In Other Words IRL = In Real Life ISTM = It Seems To Me ITRO = In The Region Of IWBNI = It Would Be Nice If IYSWIM = If You See What I Mean JAM = Just A Minute KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid MOTOS = Member Of The Opposite Sex OIC = Oh, I See OTOH = On The Other Hand OTT = Over The Top RUOK =Are you OK? TIA = Thanks In Advance TNX = Thanks TTYL=Talk To You Later TVM = Thanks Very Much WRT = With Regard To WTH = What The Hell (similarly: WTF) YABA = Yet Another Bloody Acronym YHM You Have Mail |
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
TEXT 1:MASTER OF THE MAINFRAME THOMAS WATSON JR.
by John Greenwald
As the eldest son of the president of International Business Machines, Thomas Watson Jr. grew up tortured by selfdoubt. He suffered bouts of depression and once burst into tears over the thought that his formidable father wanted him to join IBM and eventually run what was already a significant company. “I can’t do it”, he wanted to his mother. “I can’t go to work for IBM”.
Yet 26 years later, Watson not only succeeded his father but also would eventually surpass him. IBM is now synonymous with computers, even though the company did not invent the device that would change our life, nor had it shipped a single computer before Tom Jr. took over.
Under Tom Jr., Big Blue put its logo on 70% of the world’s computers and so thoroughly dominated the industry that even rivals like Univac – which built the first large commercial computer – were dismissed as merely part of “the Bunch”. And while newcomers such as Compaq and Microsoft brought the company to its knees in the 1980s, the colossus that Watson inherited and reinvented in the 1950s and ‘60s stands strong again today, the sixth largest US Company.
Tom Jr. needed six years and three schools to get through high school, and managed to graduate from Brown University only through the forbearance of a sympathetic dean. The young playboy rated the pleasures of drinking and dancing far above those of learning.
Watson enrolled in IBM sales school after college and hated that as well. He devoted more time to indulging his passions for flying airplanes by day and partying by night than to calling on credits.
World War II liberated Tom Watson Jr. from his demons. His success in promoting the use of light simulators earned him a job as aide and pilot for Major General Follett Bradley, the Army Air Forces’ inspector general. Watson flew throughout Asia, Africa and the Pacific, displaying steel nerves and planning skills.
After the war Tom Jr. went back to the IBM company. At that time IBM dominated the market for punch-card tabulators – forerunners of computers that performed such tasks as running payrolls and collating census data.
Back from the war, Tom Jr. saw IBM afresh and quickly realized that its future lay in computers, not a 19th century information technology like tabulators. Even the first primitive vacuum – tube machines could calculate 10 times as fast as IBMs tabulators.
Tom Jr., who became IBM president in 1952, recruited electronics experts and brought in luminaries like computer pioneer John von Neumann to teach the company’s engineers and scientists. By 1963, IBM had grabbed an 8-to-1 lead in revenues over Sperry Rand, the manufacturer of Univac.
With IBM clearly on top in the early ’60s Watson took one of the biggest gambles in corporate history. He proposed spending more than $5 billion – about three times IBM’s revenues at the time – to develop a new line of computers that would make the company’s existing machines obsolete. The goal was to replace specialized units with a family of compatible computers that could fill every data-processing need. Customers could start with small computers and move up as their demands increased, taking their old software along with them. This flexibility inspired the name System’360, after the 360 degrees in a circle.
System’360, which revolutionized the industry, proved to be wildly successful. IBM’s base of installed computers jumped from 11,000 in early 1964 to 35,000 in 1970, and its revenues more than doubled, to $7.5 billion.
A heart attack forced Watson to retire at the age 57 in 1971, leaving him plenty of time for such adventures as retracing a flight across Siberia that he had made during the war. A lifelong Democrat (his father had been a Franklin Roosevelt confidant), Watson served for two years as Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to Moscow.
Thomas Watson Jr. died in 1993 in Connecticut at the age of 79.
From the Fortune
TEXT 2: INFORMATION FLOW IS YOUR LIFEBLOOD
by Bill Gates
Information work is thinking work. When thinking and working together are significantly assisted by computer technology, you have a digital nervous system. It consists of the advanced digital processes that knowledge workers use to make better decisions —to think, act, react, and adapt. Michael Dertouzos of MIT writes that the future " Information Marketplace " will require a large amount of special software and complex combinations of human and machine processes—an excellent description of a digital nervous system at work.
E)o you view information technology as a way to solve specific problems? Then you're probably only getting a fraction of the benefits that modern computers and software can provide. Instead, you should be creating systems that will deliver information immediately to anyone who can use it—"digital nervous systems."
As the boss of Microsoft, the world's most successful software company, I played a large part in the birth of the Information Age. In this book I explain the idea of a digital nervous system— the use of information technology to satisfy people's needs at work and at home, just as the human nervous system supports the human mind.
Like a living creature, an organization works best if it can rely on a nervous system that sends information immediately to the parts that need it. A digital nervous system can unite all of an organization's systems and processes, releasing rivers of information and allowing businesses to make huge leaps in efficiency, growth, and profits. I have a simple but strong belief: how you gather, manage, and use information will decide whether you win or lose.
Manage with the force of facts
The best way to put distance between your company and the crowd is to do an excellent job with information. There are more competitors today. There is more information available about them and about the market, which is now worldwide. The winners will be the ones who develop a world-class digital nervous system so that information can easily flow through their companies for maximum and constant learning.
I know what you're going to say: no, it's efficient processes! It's quality! It's winning market share and creating brands that are recognized! It's getting close to customers! Success, of course, depends on all of these things. Nobody can help you if your processes aren't efficient, if you don't care about quality, if you don't work hard to build your brand, if your customer service is poor. A bad business plan will fail however good your information is. And bad practice will spoil a good plan. If you do enough things badly, you'll go out of business.
But whatever else you have on your side today—smart employees, excellent products, loyal customers, cash in the bank —you need a fast flow of good information to make processes efficient, raise quality, and improve the way you put your plan into practice. Most companies have good people working for them. Most companies want to treat their customers well. Good, useful data exists somewhere within most organizations. Information flow is the lifeblood of your company because it enables you to get the most out of your people and to learn from your customers. See if you have the information to answer these questions:
• What do customers think about your products? What problems do they want you to fix ? What new features do they want you to add ?
• What problems do your partners have as they sell your products or work with you ?
• Where are your competitors winning business from you, and why ?
• Will customers' changing demands force you to develop new capacities?
• What new markets are appearing that you should enter?
A digital nervous system won't guarantee you the right answers to these questions. But it will free you from the old paper processes so that you'll have the time to think about the questions. It will give you the data to start thinking immediately, and to see the trends coming at you. A digital nervous system will make it possible for facts and ideas to quickly surface from deep in your organization, from the people who have information about these questions and, it's likely, many of the answers. Most important, it will allow you to do all these things fast.
From Business @ the Speed of Thought
TEXT 3: MOVE PEOPLE INTO THINKING WORK
by Bill Gates
The inevitable result of better computer systems is a smarter use of people's time. With intelligent software continuously searching through its sales data, following trends, and noticing what's selling and what's not, the British chain store Marks & Spencer can use its 500 to 600 buyers much more efficiently.
Instead of working through fat paper reports from the previous day to try to find out whether sales are going well, the buyers can use their time more efficiently, using what the latest data is telling them. If sales are going well, no human action is needed, but the system checks sales data and notices any items whose sales are higher or lower than expected. Reports on these items are created automatically and they are all that buyers must deal with.
Using software to handle routine data tasks gives you the opportunity to provide the human touch where it really matters. In a hotel, for instance, smart software can dramatically shorten the check-in and check-out time. Staff can then help customers rather than filling in forms, and guests will enjoy their stays more as a result.
Electronic commerce, though, brings new challenges. In a physical store a sales person can use clues such as the customer's questions, dress style, and body language to assess his or her interests. However, at a Web store no one sees the customer, and the goal is to let the customer do as much shopping as possible for himself or herself. Web store owners then have some interesting information to find out. Based on customer behavior, how do you construct a model of who the shopper is? It requires smart data analysis.
Digital tools for analysis are changing the nature of work. Knowledge workers can concentrate on unusual events rather than on the routine. Of course, people don't like allowing machines to take their decisions for them. But when a database gets big enough and complex enough, the computer can do the initial searching and sorting far better than a human being. We're simply not able to recognize patterns in large amounts of data. And the available data—in databases, file systems, message systems, and websites—is growing all the time. The only way we can get the full value of all this data is to use computer tools to find the useful information.
HarperCollins, the publishing company, uses a PC-based system to follow book sales so that it can print just enough books to meet demand. That way it won't be caught with large stocks of unsold books in stores, which publishers have to take back. After only a year in operation the new system has helped HarperCollins reduce returns of unsold copies of its most popular books from over 30 percent to about 10 percent. Each percentage point represents millions of dollars in savings.
Using software to find useful patterns in large amounts of data is called data mining. It can help to predict whether customers are likely to buy an item because of their age, sex, hometown, and other characteristics. It can also identify customers with similar shopping behavior, and customers with specific tastes, in order to provide improved individual service. An Australian health-care company used data mining to follow buying patterns and discovered a $10 million fraud.
The most common use of data mining is for database marketing, in which companies analyze data to discover customer tastes and then make offers to specific sets of people. For example, American Airlines uses information about the twenty-six million members of its frequent flier program—such as the car rental companies, hotels, and restaurants they use—to develop targeted marketing efforts that have saved more than $100 million in costs.
Data mining is part of customer relationship management (CRM), in which information technology helps companies manage customer relationships individually instead of all together. With the patterns revealed by data mining, you can present your products to a customer in a way that's most likely to increase your value to the customer, and his or her value to you.
From Business @ the Speed of Thought
TEXT 4: FINDING INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET
Many people have described the internet as a huge public library; a library open to anyone, twenty-four hours a day and with more information than any other library that has ever existed. But this analogy is erroneous. Libraries are organised so that information is easy to find, with uniform, centralised systems and ever-helpful librarians. The internet is a different story. Where do you start when you are trying to find specific information about a specialist interest or one particular piece of data for some academic research?
One good place to start is by clicking onto a site like www.intute.ac.uk. Here - instead of ploughing your way through lists and lists of possibly useful web resources - the donkey work has been done for you - subject specialists have selected websites and evaluated their potential for prospective users like you! Its impressive database holds more than a hundred thousand records and the service has been created by participating universities in the UK.
Subjects on Intute are initially categorised into four main topic areas: Science & Technology, Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences and Health & Life Sciences. Once you have selected the most appropriate topic area you can move nearer to your specialist subject through further subheadings or by using a search box. Additional services include a catalogue of new resources, a virtual training suite with tutorials on all kinds of specialist subjects, data tables, statistics, references, guides and much more.
With so much information in one place you might need to spend a little while exploring the site to see where your particular interests lie. But it will be time well-invested and once you discover where you need to be, you can bookmark the pages for easy future access.
Intute is not the only site of this kind. At www.scholar.google.com you can find academic literature on a wide range of subjects including theses, books and abstracts. The scholar site works through a search box but there is a very useful help section that can assist you in your efforts. www.scirus.com is a science specific search engine which scans more than 450 million science web sites enabling you to quickly find the most recently published reports and data with the minimum of effort. Microsoft Research and NASA sponsors the citeseer digital library where you can get help finding information about computer science, information technology and computer engineering. It can be found at http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/. The name is a pun. A 'sightseer' is a tourist who looks at the sights!
Another tip for finding information on the internet is by working out the name of an existing web site. If you don't know the name of the site, you can often work it out using this formula:
www.name of organisation.domain.
For example, www.britishcouncil.org. If you are right - all well and good; if you are wrong - then the internet will offer alternative suggestions.The main domain types are:
edu - educational institution in the USA
ac.uk - educational institution in the UK
com - commercial or personal
net - internet infrastructure
gov - government agency
org - non-profit organisations
mil - military institutions
TEXT 5: E-COMMERCE BECOMES MORE SOCIAL
The first generation of e-commerce sites, which hit the web in the late 1990s, were essentially digitised mail-order catalogues. Websites like Epinions collected user reviews and recommendations, but they did not sell anything-and many collapsed during the dotcom crash. Only Amazon brought together selling and social feedback, to great effect. By means of collective filtering, it made suggestions based on other buyers' purchases.
The second generation of e-commerce firms is quite different. Few emerged from Silicon Valley. Indeed, they tend to have offline roots, and sometimes seek to drive customers to actual shops. Many make their money from flash sales -brief offers of steep discounts on products -that are advertised to registered members.
The pioneer of flash sales, Vente Privee, grew out of the French apparel industry (the name means "private sale"). Even today, its centre of gravity is offline, says Jacques-Antoine Granjon, Vente Privee's boss, who founded the firm in 2001 along with seven partners. Hundreds of designers, photographers and hairstylists organise its online sales events. After a slow start, Vente Privee has been growing quickly. Its five local sites in Europe have more than 12m members and are expected to bring in about € 800m ($1 billion) in revenues this year.
Vente Privee's success has inspired others. The best known is Gilt Groupe, which emulates the sample sales of luxury retailers in New York, where it is based. Gilt wants to become a platform for all sorts of social commerce, says Susan Lyne, its boss. It recently launched several local sites in America, offering "deals of the day".
Gilt Groupe is straying into the territory of another clutch of city-based e-commerce sites, which facilitate collective buying. Every day these sites offer the service of a local business -a restaurant meal, a spa-treatment, the rental of an expensive car –at a discount of up to 90% (they generally keep half of the sale price). But a deal is struck only if a minimum number of members pounce. Buyers thus have an interest in spreading the word, which they do mostly on social networks.
Yet it may be a third generation of social-shopping sites that really deserves the label, says Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research. The latest batch of firms try to build their business on top of the “social graph”: the network of friends spun on social networks. They make use of virtual currencies and the growing popularity of smart-phones, which can track consumers’ location.
ModCloth, which sells clothing from independent designers, has an active forum on Facebook and lets customers vote on which products the site should stock. Lockerz, another upstart, pays members “pointz” if they watch videos with advertisements, invite friends and do things with them. They can then use this currency to obtain discounts. Similarly, Shopkick rewards consumers for offline activities such as visiting stores and scanning products with their smart-phones.
Whatever the fate of individual firms and sales models, e-commerce is bound to become more social, predicts Sonali de Rycker of Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm. Retailing has several persistent problems: the high cost of attracting visitors, the low probability that they become buyers and the difficulty of getting them to come back. Sociable e-commerce offers potential solutions to all of them.
From the Economist
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