Buzzwords

M, MB, MEGA: One million.

MACINTOSH: Apple Computers personal computer that was the first popular computerthe ill-fated Xerox Star was probably the firstto use a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and a mouse pointing device.

MACRO: The shortened version of the term macro instruction. A macro is a brief series of commands that are programmed to perform a series of actions when triggered by a single keystroke or combination of keystrokes. Adobe Photoshops Actions are really macros that let you automate repetitive imaging tasks.

MAGIC WAND: The Magic Wand is a powerful selection tool found in Adobe Photoshop and other image enhancement programs, and selects part of an image based on similarity of color, not shape. When [mouse] clicking on an individual pixel in a photograph, the Magic Wand tool selects pixels that have the same color plus similar shades of that color. How many similarly colored shades are selected depends on the Tolerance specified in the Magic Wands palette. In Corels Painter, the Magic Wand is a command and does not appear as a tool.

MAGNETIC BUBBLE: A method that uses magnetic film for storing information as a pattern of magnetic fields. Magnetic bubble devices are non-volatile and hold data even when power is lost or turned off.

MAGNETO-OPTICAL: This class of removable drives use the lasers ability to heat material to change reflectivity and produce media that can be erased and reused. One of the negatives of optical drives is that when writing data to optical media, the drives require three spins. The first spin erases existing data, the second writes the data, and the third verifies that the data is there. When compared to magnetic media storage devices, all this spinning tends to reduce the MO drives performance.

MASER: Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

MASK: Many image enhancement programs have the ability to create masksor stencilsthat are placed over the original image to protect parts of it allowing other sections to be edited or enhanced. Cutouts or openings in the mask make the unmasked portions of the image accessible for manipulation, while the mask protects the rest of the photograph.

MCA: Micro Channel Architecture.

MEGABYTE: What you have when you lasso 1024 Kilobytes. Often called just meg and abbreviated as MB.

MENU BAR: In a graphical user interface, the menu bar is that portion of a window at its top that contains a row of on-screen, pull-down menus.

METAFILE: This multifunction graphic file type accommodates both vector and bitmapped image information within the same file. While more popular in the Windows environment, Apple Computers PICT format is a metafile.

MHz: MegaHertz or 1,000,000 cycles per second.

MICR: Magnetic Ink Character Recognition.

MICROCOMPUTER: A complete small computer system that includes a keyboard, monitor, memory (RAM), and microprocessor (CPU).

MIDI: (pronounced middie) Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a standard that describes how computers and musical increments interface.

MINI-DISC: A 21/2 compact disc format that can both record and play 74 minutes of sound. It is currently only used for consumer music applications similar to portable cassette and CD players. Sony has built one of these drives into its amazingly cool VAIO MX computer system along with a recordable DVD drive.

MIPS: Million Instructions Per Second. A measure of computer performance that indicates how fast a CPU can process software instructions.

MODEM: MOdulate-DEModulate. Since the telephone system in America is currently an almost completely analog one, computer data must be converted from digital form into analog form for transmission over telephone lines. At the other end, the data is then converted from analog back into digital form. More and more Internet service is being provided by fast digital broadband connections through cable TV, ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) and satellite systems but they are not universally available as POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

MONITOR: Another word for the box containing the screen, its power supply, and other components that enable you to see a digital photograph. Thats why you often hear some monitors called displays. A word about screen size: Manufacturers have routinely overstated the screen sizes of monitors in much the same way that TV set builders have historically done. A 17 monitor has an actual diagonal viewing area of 15.8, providing 18.89 square inches less of usable screen area but all monitors built after February 1996 must be described by their actual viewable area. All LCD screens are their actual diagonal size, thus a 17 LCD actually measures 17, and provides more useful workspace than an equivalently rated 17 CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitor.

MONOCHROME: A monochrome monitor displays one color on a different colored background.

MORPH: Morphing (short for Metamorphosis) is a graphics technique that blends between two different shapes over a short period of time. Before morph became such a hot buzzword, some graphics software called this technique Tweening because it changes an objects shape between one end of a sequence and another.

MOS: Metal Oxide Semiconductor.

MOTHERBOARD: A rigid board containing printed circuitry and chips that when working together make the machine that goes ping. The motherboard holds the RAM, device controllers (e.g., CD-ROM, hard drive, tape back-up mechanism), the bus, and the main processing chip called the CPU, or Central Processing Unit, although there are some computer users who call the entire box a CPU. In the Apple Macintosh environment youll often hear the motherboard called a logic board. Occasionally you will see the term daughterboard, which is a circuit board that attaches (plugs into) other cards installed in the computer or the motherboard itself.

MOUSE: An integral part of any graphical user interface is the ability to use a pointing device. The most common is called a mouse because of its oval shape and tail-like cable that connects it to the keyboard (Mac OS) or back of the computer (Windows). Wireless mice are also available from companies such as Wacom (www.wacom.com).

MPEG: Moving Pictures Experts Group. An ISO standard for compressing full-motion video, which provides more compression than JPEG because it takes advantage of the fact that full-motion video is made up of successive frames that consist of areas that do not change.

MS-DOS: Microsoft Disk Operating System.

MTBF: Mean Time Between Failures. A measurement by which a hardware component or computer peripheral is expected to perform for a specified number of hours without failing. Hard and removable drive companies often supply this information as part of the drives specifications. For computer users who spend more than four hours a day at their computer, MTBF is a good way to compare a products usefulness in the real world. For light users (less than two hours per day), its less important.

MTTR: Mean Time To Repair.

MULTIPLEX: The ability to transmit two or more signals on a data transmission system.

MULTISCAN: On a typical CRT monitor, a scanning beam starts at one corner and traces a single pixel wide horizontal line, then goes on to trace the next line. How fast the monitor does both horizontal and vertical scans varies depending on the kind of graphics card thats used by the computer. A multiscan monitor automatically matches the signal sent to it by the graphics card (or motherboard).

MULTI-TASKING: This is often written as multitasking, but I find it easier to read with the hyphen. It is the ability of the computers operating system to allow for two or more operations to be performed simultaneously. The current versions of the Mac OS and Windows operating systems both permit multi-tasking.

MULTI-USER: A systemor softwarethat can be used by two or more users at the same time.