Gantt Chart
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A diagrammatic technique used for planning and tracking
projects.
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Gateway
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A networking device, which links networks together. It scrutinises the data traveling between
networks and may block its path for any number of reasons. In many ways similar to a hostile border
guard which may decide to refuse admission to a person traveling to an
adjoining country.
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GIS
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Geographic Information System. Data warehousing decision
support tool focusing on data that has a spatial aspect. An example of GIS in
action is where the data associated with people’s income is plotted on a map
of say Europe.
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GNU
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GNU is Not Unix. This recursive title is a reference to a
Unix-like operating system, which spawned the open source movement. At this point
in time it exists in a parallel universe to Linux, but they are converging.
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Gnutella
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Is a file sharing system, which allows networked users to
share files on each other’s computers. It is open source software. The
originators were keen eaters of Nutella, and intended to license the software
under the GNU General Public Licence.
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Google
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An e-business that derives the majority of its revenues
through pay-per-click advertising. It is well positioned for the forthcoming
web services trend. See Web 2.0.
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Gopher
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Gopher is a distributed document search and retrieval
system that acted as a pre-web version of the World Wide Web. Being
text-based it lost out to the graphical user interface of the modern day
World Wide Web.
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Governance
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A term that relates to the activity of managing one’s
resources (eg. money, people, techn9ology) effectively. Poor governance has
led to the collapse of some high profile businesses, eg. Enron, Worldcom.
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GPRS
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General Pack Radio Service. A digital cellular technology
for providing high(ish) bandwidth wireless networking. Sometimes referred to
as 2.5 G. Usually associated with mobiles/PDAs that can handle the dispatch
and receipt of emails. Emails require more bandwidth than voice.
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Green screen
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A term used to describe a dumb terminal. It is a
reference to the fact that many dumb terminals have a dark green background
on which is displayed light green text.
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Grid Computing
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A term associated with distributed computing.
Specifically the Grid is an instance of this created by academic institutions
and looks set to become the next internet. The academics have linked very
powerful servers together using high-speed networks.
Latterly IBM has commandeered this term to describe how
it can help organizations pool and utilize the unused processing resource
available in both their servers and desktop devices.
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Groupware
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Today it is more commonly known as collaboration
software. It enables people within an organization to work together. Email,
wikis and instant messaging are examples of groupware. Social networking
software such as LinkedIn are a beyond the office version of groupware.
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GSM
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Group Special Mobile. A digital cellular technology for
providing voice quality communications. Sometimes referred to as 2G.
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GUI
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Graphical User Interface. A type of user interface, which utilizes graphics, colour and
windows. The less attractive
alternative is a character based user interface (aka command line).
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