The Lexicon of New Media Terms

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Note: These entries have been loosely complied from hundreds of online and print sources. Make independent confirmation and proper citation before using any of this material for professional or academic purposes.

Terms beginning with "B"

• B2B: Business-to-business marketing in which the buyers and sellers are both companies selling other products or services.
• B2C: Business-to-consumer marketing in which the buyer is typically an individual who will use the item or service personally (for example, most online malls).
• backbone: The system of high-speed Internet connections which route traffic to slower regional and local data paths.
• banners: A common unit of Web advertising begun by GNN and HotWired in 1994; a typical banner is 468x60 pixels.
• BBEdit: A text editor for Macintosh OS; widely used by Web design professionals.
• BBS: Bulletin board system, small dial-up services which since 1990 largely became displaced by Web sites.
• behavior: A programming term for the what an object does based on certain attributes assigned to that object.
• bells-and-whistles: Features of a design which don't add content and are used just to impress viewers with the medium's sophistication (or lack thereof).
• Berners-Lee, Tim: Creator of the World Wide Web format in 1989; he made the first Web browser and server at CERN in 1990.
• beta version: Unfinished new software which is released to the public for testing and feedback; beta testers find problems with the program which then (hopefully) get fixed before the final release.
• bit bepth: A measurement of image quality based on orders of magnitute; for example, an 4-bit image can support 128 colors, while an 8-bit gives 256 colors.
• bitmap: A mapped array of pixels that can be saved as a file; both JPEG and GIF images are bitmap graphic formats.
• bits: Binary digits of ones and zeros; eight bits make up one byte.
• Boo.com: A famous failure from 1999 in which millions of dollars were wasted trying to build and launch a fashion Web site.
• branding: Messages a company puts out to encourage consumers to feel a certain way about that company and/or its products.
• brick-and-mortar stores: Physical shops which customers walk into to buy things, as opposed to shopping online using e-commerce sites.
• broadcast: Sending data or messages from one source to all available recievers; for example, radio and television signals.
• brochureware: A Web site created to promote a company or its services but offering little other functionality to users.
• browser: Software used to view content from the Web and follow hypertext links to other documents or files.
• Bryce: A commercial application used for designing 3-D computer models and fantasy landscapes.
• Business 2.0: A print magazine focused on technology-related investing and businesses.
• byte: The basic unit of computer storage and processing; 8 bits make 1 byte; a thousand bytes is a kilobyte (k); a thousand kilobytes is a megabyte (MB); a thousand megabytes is a gigabyte (G).

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Note: These entries have been loosely complied from hundreds of online and print sources. Make independent confirmation and proper citation before using any of this material for professional or academic purposes.