Glossary: New Media

false positives

Legitimate email inappropriately rejected by an email provider’s spam filters.

favicon

Website graphic—often a company logo—that displays beside the URL in a web browser’s address bar and bookmark list. Short for “favorite icon,” favicons reinforce branding.See also: marquee

feed reader

Software that downloads new content posted in the syndication feeds to which an end user has subscribed. Many web browsers and email clients offer internal RSS reader functionality.

FiOS

Abbreviation for Fiber Optic Service, a telecom-munications infrastructure rolled out by Verizon to provide data communication services—phone, internet, TV programming—to subscribing homes and businesses. FiOS transfers data via light pulses, allowing extremely fast downloads and uploads.

firewall

A hardware or software-based security barrier that attempts to “wall off” a computer or network from the “fires” created by insecure surfing practices and hacker attacks. While necessary to protect technology from malicious intrusion, the firewall is a first suspect when troubleshooting connectivity problems.

firewire

Technically known as IEEE 1394, Firewire is Apple’s trademarked name for a connectivity standard that allows extremely fast data transfers between computers and external devices such as digital video cameras, DVD burners and standalone hard drives.

flash

flash optimization

The process of recoding the HTML on a Flash reliant web page so search engine crawlers can index their content. Crawlers index only text, so need the assistance from optimized code to correctly catalog any Flash-based content.

flash video

Increasingly popular file format for streaming video content due to its efficient compression algorithms and nearly universal playback compatibility.

flashing

The practice of upgrading hardware capabilities by sending a manufacturer’s data stream directly to a device’s memory chip—from which location the upgrade program executes. Most content providers use this technique to automatically reprogram set top boxes.

floating ad

Animated online ad format that overlays an ad atop the current web page. These ads can appear uninvited or after mouse-overs, and typically disappear after a set interval. A popular format due to its relatively high click-through rate.

fold

On a website, the bottom portion of a web page that visitors can view without having to scroll when browsing with an 800 x 600 screen resolution. Ads displayed “below the fold” will fully download and register on the ad server’s impression counter, but may not be seen by a click-happy visitor.

folksonomy

A “folks” based taxonomy of internet content in which all internet citizens can apply keyword tags of their choosing to all manner of favorite content—websites, photographs, media files, etc. Folksonomy describes a truly democratic way of ranking and categorizing online content.

footer navigation

Typically presented as a series of text links in a small font, footer navigation appears globally at the bottom of every page on a website. Though the footer template can feature any type of navigational link, footer links are typically administrative in nature—privacy policies, legal disclaimers, contact addresses and such.

forms

Web forms are data entry documents that ask visitors to fill in blank text fields with information necessary to complete a transaction—whether buying bestsellers on a credit card, subscribing to a free newsletter or alerting an employer to a problem off site. As forms can connect to external databases, they also facilitate business reporting and querying.

FPS

Frames Per Second (see Frame Rate).

fragmentation

In a technical context, fragmentation describes the condition of a poorly optimized hard disk. A fragmented hard drive will have few areas of contiguous space to accommodate large media files, so data bits scatter all across the disk and playback performance degrades. In a marketing context, fragmentation describes an audience dividing its attention to an increasing number of TV channels, music downloads, video on demand offerings, web portals and more. In other words, the media is not so mass as it used to be.

frame rate

The pace at which a creative medium displays its video frames. The faster the FPS rate, the sharper and steadier the picture. A TV signal displays 30 FPS. Motion pictures use a rate of 24 FPS. Online consumer-generated video can drop down to 15 FPS or less, depending upon how the creator encodes the video. Lower FPS rates facilitate sharing due to smaller file sizes, but the viewing experience suffers accordingly.

frames

In video, a frame is a split second of video footage. Online, a frame is a design element that allows webmasters to divide a single page into visually distinct sections—each of which displays a separately coded web page. The master file that controls frameset behavior allows visitors to simultaneously navigate multiple pages within a single site.

frames per second

See Frame Rate.

frequency

A measure of how often a web visitor or TV viewer sees the same ad during a defined period of time.

freshness

A measure of how successfully search engines keep up with indexing the internet’s fast changing web space. This includes updating changed pages, removing deleted pages and adding entirely new ones.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol is a method for transferring large data files across the internet. Many websites employ an FTP program to upload new content.

FTTP

Fiber To The Premises refers to a fiber optic data connection that content providers can use to deliver any type of telecom service, such as phone, broadband and subscription television. Light-based fiber optics accommodate extremely fast data transfer rates.