n. Internet. A hostile or inflammatory comment. v. To leave such a comment. A flame war is an exchange of such comments.

Portmanteau for folk and taxonomy. n. Describes a dynamic system of user-generated, categorical tags consisting of freely chosen keywords. [Coined in 2004 by Thomas Vander Wal.]

File Transfer Protocol. n. A method for uploading and downloading files on the Internet.

Portmanteau for global and local. adj. Used to denote global solutions adapted to local needs. Example: craigslist.org.

n. Web. A computer or network of computers that provides services to others computers. v. To provide computer services to other computers on a network. Examples: Blogger and Typepad are hosted blog services.

HyperText Markup Language. n. The markup language used to create interlinked Web pages. [Invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee.]

n. A reference, or link, within an electronic document that, if clicked, leads to another point in the same document or to another electronic document; or that triggers the download of an electronic file. Generally displayed as highlighted anchor text, an icon, or an image.

n. A link to your website or blog from another. Used by search engines as a primary measure of popularity or rank.

n. A web-based scripting language originally developed by Netscape that can be embedded in the HTML of a web page to extend functionality. Examples: validation of form input and button rollovers.

n. A relevant word or phrase used in web-based titles, body text, headings, tags, or meta tags to facilitate topical searches.

Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl, Python or PHP. A suite of free programs that serve, respectively, as operating system, web server, database management system, and scripting languages for dynamic websites and servers. Often used in conjunction with discussions of Web 2.0. [Coined in 1998 by Michael Kuntz.]

n. Describes web page links that are no longer valid due to deleted pages or changed URLs.

n. A colloquial term for an L-shaped diagram illustrating statistical distribution of a small population of high-frequency events along the vertical axis, called the head, and a much greater population of increasingly rare events falling along the horizontal axis, or tail. Examples: distribution of wealth within a culture, frequency of words within a text, or a graph illustrating the popularity of blogs. Sometimes called Zipf or Power Law distribution or a Pareto tail. [First applied to distribution of digital content by Chris Anderson in 2004.]

n. Blog. To visit a blog without ever posting a comment. A lurker is one who regularly engages in such behavior.

n. A method for annotating a digital document with embedded tags to determine processing, format, and general display. Examples: HTML and XML.

n. Information used to describe other information. Examples: meta tag or categorical tag. [From Greek meta, beside, and Latin data, information.]

n. HTML. Several types of information stored in a web page’s source code and invisible to the general user. Traditionally used to aid search engine indexing, but abused by spammers who fill the tags with unrelated search terms, an activity sometimes called keyword stuffing. Examples: meta description tags aid search engines by providing brief summaries of a page’s content; meta keywords tags display comma-delimited lists of terms relevant to a web page’s content, including possible misspellings.

n. A distinct idea that propagates across networks of individuals. On blogs, often used in combinations such as meme war or meme hack. [Coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene.]

Internet. v. To screen or otherwise process comments prior to public display to allow deletion of spam or to enforce guidelines. Most blog authoring software features moderation controls.

Portmanteau of mobile and blog. n. A blog that is updated from a phone or personal digital assistant (PDA). Moblog content often contains more photos than text.

MainStream Media. n. Commonly used acronym on blogs.

Portmanteau of network and etiquette. n. An unwritten code of online conduct that has grown up over time. Generally dictates respectful, if not always formally polite, behavior.

n. Software that allows a user to subscribe to and read constantly updated newsfeeds. Can reside locally on the desktop or be a web service accessed via a browser. Sometimes called a newsreader or feedreader.

n. Syndicated web content that is subscription-based. Newsfeed content consists of XML-based RSS or Atom files that may include a title; an excerpt or full text; author name; the date and time the file was uploaded; categorical tags; and a unique URL, or permalink for the entry.

adj. Describes a type of computer program for which the original source code is publicly available, allowing other programmers to contribute to and build upon the core code. Examples: Linux and WordPress.