MIS 301 Final Exam Vocab

wiki

A website that can be modified by anyone, from directly within a web browser (provided that user is granted edit access).

trackbacks

Links in a blog post that refer readers back to cited sources. _____ allow a blogger to see which and how many other bloggers are referring to their content.

hashtags

A method for organizing tweets where keywords are preceded by the # character.

griefers

Internet vandals and mischief makers; also sometimes referred to as trolls.

embassy

In the context of social media, an established online presence where customers can reach and interact with the firm. An effective _____ approach uses a consistent firm name in all its social media properties.

**inbound marketing**

Leveraging online channels to draw consumers to the firm with compelling content rather than conventional forms of promotion such as advertising, e-mail marketing, traditional mailings, and sales calls.

owned media

Communication channels that an organization controls. These can include firm-run blogs, websites, apps, and organization accounts on social media

long tail

In this context, refers to an extremely large selection of content or products. The ____ is a phenomenon whereby firms can make money by offering a near-limitless selection.

social media

Content that is created, shared, and commented on by a broader community of users. 

peer production

When users work, often collaboratively, to create content and provide services.  

APIs

Programming hooks, or guidelines, published by firms that tell other programs how to get a service to perform a task such as send or receive data. 

prediction market

Polling a diverse crowd and aggregating opinions in order to form a forecast of an eventual outcome.

online reputation management

The process of tracking and responding to online mentions of a product, organization, or individual.

crowdsourcing

The act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

collaborative consumption

When participants share access to products and services rather than having ownership. Shared resources can be owned by a central service provider (e.g., Zipcar) or provided by a community that pools available resources (e.g., Airbnb, Uber).

roll back

The ability to revert a wiki page to a prior version. This is useful for restoring earlier work in the event of a posting error, inaccuracy, or vandalism.

social networks

An online community that allows users to establish a personal profile and communicate with others.

astroturfing

Engineering the posting of positive comments and reviews of a firm’s product and services (or negative ones of a firm’s competitors). Many ratings sites will penalize firms that offer incentives for positive feedback posts.

paid media

Refers to efforts where an organization pays to leverage a channel or promote a message. ____ efforts include things such as advertisement and sponsorships.

viral

In this context, information or applications that spread rapidly between users.

neutral point of view (NPOV)

An editorial style that is free of bias and opinion. Wikipedia norms dictate that all articles must be written in _____.

blog rolls

A list of a blogger’s favorite blogs.

earned media

Promotions that are not paid for or owned but rather grow organically from customer efforts or other favorable publicity. Social media, word of mouth, and unsolicited positive press mentions are all examples of _____.

SMART

A group tasked with creating policies and providing support, training, guidance, and development expertise for and monitoring of a firm’s social media efforts.

sock puppets

A fake online persona created to promote a particular point of view, often in praise of a firm, product, or individual.

wikimasters

Individuals often employed by organizations to review community content in order to delete excessive posts, move commentary to the best location, and edit as necessary.

wisdom of crowds

The idea that a group of individuals, often consisting of untrained amateurs, will collectively have more insight than a single or small group of trained professionals.

blogs

Online journal entries, usually made in a reverse chronological order. ____ typically provide comment mechanisms where users can post feedback for authors and other readers.

what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)

A phrase used to describe graphical editing tools, such as those found in a wiki, page layout program, or other design tool.

free rider problem

When others take advantage of a user or service without providing any sort of reciprocal benefit.

Web 2.0

A term broadly referring to Internet services that foster collaboration and information sharing; characteristics that distinctly set ____ efforts apart from the static, transaction-oriented Web sites.

Software development kit (SDK)

Tools that allow the creation of products or add-ons for a specific operating system or other computing platform.

**acqui-hire**

Referring to “acquiring” a firm as a way to “hire” talent.

short

____ selling is an attempt to profit from a falling stock price. They sell shares they don’t own with an obligation of later repayment. They do so in the hope that the price of sold shares will fall. They then repay share debt with shares purchased at a lower price and pocket the difference (spread) between initial share price and repayment price.

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

The amount charged every time an ad appears 1,000 times (M is the roman numeral for 1,000).

content delivery networks (CDN)

Systems distributed throughout the Internet (or other network) that help to improve the delivery (and hence loading) speeds of Web pages and other media, typically by spreading access across multiple sites located closer to users. Akamai is the largest *_____*, helping firms like CNN and MTV quickly deliver photos, video, and other media worldwide.

content adjacency

Concern that an advertisement will run near offensive material, embarrassing an advertiser and/or degrading its products or brands.

open source software (OSS)

Software that is free and whose code can be accessed and potentially modified by anyone.

deep Web

Internet content that can’t be indexed by Google and other search engines.

IPO

The first time a firm makes shares available via a public stock exchange, also known as “going public.”

colossal walled garden

A closed network or single set of services controlled by one dominant firm.

network effects

Also known as Metcalfe’s Law, or network externalities. When the value of a product or service increases as its number of users expands.

localization

Adapting products and services for different languages and regional differences.

social graph

The global mapping of users and organizations and how they are connected.

envelopment

A strategy whereby a firm with a significant customer base adds a feature to an existing product or service and eliminates the need for any rival, stand-alone platforms. Think Apple adding video to cameras, crushing the market for the Flip cam.

switching cost

The cost a consumer incurs when moving from one product to another. It can involve actual money spent (e.g., buying a new product) as well as investments in time, any data loss, and so forth.

**cloud**

A collection of resources available for access over the Internet.

compliance

Ensuring that an organization’s systems operate within required legal constraints, and industry and organizational obligations.

Java

A programming language, initially developed by Sun Microsystems, designed to provide true platform independence (“write once, run anywhere”) for application developers. In most cases, ____ apps are developed to be executed by a ____ Virtual Machine—an interpreting layer that translates code as it executes, into the format required by the operating system and microprocessor.

agile development

Developing work continually and iteratively, with a goal of more frequent product rollouts and constant improvement across smaller components of the larger project.

capability maturity model integration (CMMI)

A process-improvement approach (useful for but not limited to software engineering projects) that can assist in assessing the maturity, quality, and development of certain organizational business processes, and suggest steps for their improvement.

database management system (DBMS)

Sometimes referred to as database software; software for creating, maintaining, and manipulating data.

business intelligence (BI) systems

Systems that use data created by other systems to provide reporting and analysis for organizational decision-making.

interpreted

___ languages are where each line of written code is converted by a software program, for execution at run-time. Most scripting languages are ___ languages.

platforms

Products and services that allow for the development and integration of software products and other complementary goods. Windows, the iPhone, the Wii, and the standards that allow users to create Facebook apps are all _____.

enterprise software

Applications that address the needs of multiple users throughout an organization or work group.

Web services

Small pieces of code that are accessed via the application server, and permit interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network.

total cost of ownership

An economic measure of the full cost of owning a product (typically computing hardware and/or software). _____ includes direct costs such as purchase price, plus indirect costs such as training, support, and maintenance. 

customer relationship management (CRM)

Systems used to support customer-related sales and marketing activities.

application server

Software that houses and serves business logic for use (and reuse) by multiple applications.

supply chain management (SCM)

Systems that can help a firm manage aspects of its value chain, from the flow of raw materials into the firm, through delivery of finished products and services at the point-of-consumption.

feature creep

An expansion of the scope of a project.

enterprise resource planning (ERP)

A software package that integrates the many functions (accounting, finance, inventory management, human resources, etc.) of a business.

firmware

Software stored on nonvolatile memory chips (as opposed to being stored on devices such as hard drives or removable discs). Despite the seemingly permanent nature of *_____*, many products allow for _____ to be upgraded online or by connecting to another device.

user interface (UI)

The mechanism through which users interact with a computing device.

JSON

____ Is a popular data interchange format, a technology standard often used to format data when being sent or received via APIs.

integrated development environment (IDE)

An application that includes an editor (a sort of programmer’s word processor), debugger, and compiler, among other tools.

computer hardware

The physical components of information technology, which can include the computer itself plus peripherals such as storage devices, input devices like the mouse and keyboard, output devices like monitors and printers, networking equipment, and so on.

waterfall method

A relatively linear sequential approach to software development (and other projects). Benefits include surfacing requirements up front and creating a blueprint to follow throughout a project. Often criticized for being too rigid, slow, and demanding project forethought that’s tough to completely identify early on.

programming language

Provides the standards, syntax, statements, and instructions for writing computer software.

distributed computing

A form of computing where systems in different locations communicate and collaborate to complete a task.

extensible markup language (XML)

A tagging language that can be used to identify data fields made available for use by other applications. Most APIs and Web services send messages where the data exchanged is wrapped in identifying ____ tags.

scrum

An approach to organizing and managing agile projects that breaks deliverables into “sprints” delivered in one- to six-week increments by teams of fewer than ten. ____ defines functions (roles) for management and development, meetings (ceremonies), and how the process is documented and tracked (artifacts).

desktop software

Applications installed on a personal computer, typically supporting tasks performed by a single user.

applications

Includes desktop applications, enterprise software, utilities, and other programs that perform specific tasks for users and organizations.

operating system

The software that controls the computer hardware and establishes standards for developing and executing applications.

scripting languages

Programming tool that executes within an application. _____ are interpreted within their applications, rather than compiled to run directly by a microprocessor.

software package

A software product offered commercially by a third party.

server

A program that fulfills the requests of a client.

compile

___ is a step in which program code written in a language that humans can more easily understand, is then converted into a form (expressed in patterns of ones and zeros) that can be understood and executed by a microprocessor. Programmers using conventional programming languages must *____* their software before making it available for execution.

EDI (electronic data interchange)

A set of standards for exchanging messages containing formatted data between computer applications.

client

A software program that makes requests of a server program.

service-oriented architecture (SOA)

A robust set of Web services built around an organization's processes and procedures.

software development methodologies

Sometimes also referred to as the SDLC or software development life cycle—methods to divide tasks related to software creation and deployment up into tasks targeted at building better products with stronger product management guidelines and techniques.

embedded systems

Special-purpose software designed and included inside physical products (often on firmware)._____ help make devices “smarter,” sharing usage information, helping diagnose problems, indicating maintenance schedules, providing alerts, or enabling devices to take orders from other systems.

software

A computer program or a collection of programs. It is a precise set of instructions that tells hardware what to do.

marginal costs

The costs associated with each additional unit produced.

vertical niches

Sometimes referred to as vertical markets. Products and services designed to target a specific industry (e.g., pharmaceutical, legal, apparel retail).

cloudbursting

Describes the use of cloud computing to provide excess capacity during periods of spiking demand. ____ is a scalability solution that is usually provided as an overflow service, kicking in as needed.

black swans

Unpredicted, but highly impactful events. Scalable computing resources can help a firm deal with spiking impact from _____ events. The phrase entered the managerial lexicon from the 2007 book of the same name by Nassim Taleb.

platform as a service (PaaS)

Where cloud providers offer services that include the hardware, operating system, development tools, testing, and hosting (i.e., the platform) that its customers use to build their own application*s* on the provider’s infrastructure. In this scenario, the cloud firm usually manages the platform (hosting, hardware, and supporting software), while the client has control over the creation and deployment of its application.

server farm or global server

A massive network of computer servers running software to coordinate their collective use. ____ provide the infrastructure backbone to SaaS and hardware cloud efforts, as well as many large-scale Internet services.

utility computing

A form of cloud computing where a firm develops its own software, and then runs it over the Internet on a service provider’s computers.

service level agreement (SLA)

A negotiated agreement between the customer and the vendor. The _____ may specify the levels of availability, serviceability, performance, operation, or other commitment requirements.

scalability

Ability to either handle increasing workloads or to be easily expanded to manage workload increases. In a software context, systems that aren’t ____ often require significant rewrites or the purchase or development of entirely new systems.

infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

Where cloud providers offer services that include running the remote hardware, storage, and networking (i.e., the infrastructure), but client firms can choose software used (which may include operating systems, programming languages, databases, and other software packages). In this scenario, the cloud firm usually manages the infrastructure (keeping the hardware and networking running), while the client has control over most other things (operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and perhaps even security and networking features like firewalls and security systems).

LAMP

An acronym standing for Linux, the Apache Web server software, the MySQL database, and any of several programming languages that start withP(e.g., Perl, Python, or PHP).

virtual desktops

When a firm runs an instance of a PC’s software on another machine and simply delivers the image of what’s executing to the remote device. Using _____, a single server can run dozens of PCs, simplifying backup, upgrade, security, and administration.

virtualization

A type of software that allows a single computer (or cluster of connected computers) to function as if it were several different computers, each running its own operating system and software. _______ software underpins most cloud computing efforts, and can make computing more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable.

Linux

An open source software operating system.