2010: The year in jargon - explained

Much as technology is a wonderful thing, the amount of jargon that surrounds it is at times baffling. Every year there's more jargon for all the new inventions and innovations. This almost never-ending feed of technological neologisms can make understanding just what is going on mildly bewildering. So, as 2010 draws to a close, we take a look over the top pieces of tech jargon of the year.

Microblogging: If 'blog' (a combination of 'web' and 'log') wasn't enough, we now have microblogging. Primarily the preserve of Twitter, microblogging is a blog, but shorter.

Certainly one of the most important pieces of jargon this year, the microblog has rarely been out of the headlines. Be it through helping to organise the recent student demonstrations in London, or through celebrities and sportspeople saying things they shouldn't. Also worth mentioning is the now infamous Twitter joke trial.

Tweet: You can't include microblogging without mentioning the rather unassuming sounding Tweet. A year or two ago, if you asked the average person on the street 'Do you Tweet?' they would probably be fairly confused, pointing out that tweeting is for birds.

Well, the word has been hijacked and is now the primary activity of the microblogger. To tweet is to post a message of under 140 characters on the social networking site Twitter.

Cloud: Microsoft has been pushing its ‘To the Cloud' advertising campaign on TV quite heavily. But what do clouds have to do with computing? Cloud computing as a technology has been around for years, but it is only in recent times that it has gone more mainstream.

Data can now be stored 'in the cloud' and online services such as Google Docs work in what is now dubbed 'the cloud'. Certainly a piece of tech jargon on the rise.

Wiki: Wikipedia has been around since 2001, but the prefix 'Wiki' has been given something of a boost thanks to Wikileaks. But where does 'Wiki' come from? Well, interestingly it is the Hawaiian word for 'fast' and was first used to describe this type of internet based software in 1995.

Thanks to Wikileaks, the word 'Wiki' has become one of the most-used pieces of jargon this year.

Tablet: The rise of the tablet computer has been one of the stories of 2010. When Apple launched the iPad the word 'tablet' became the technological buzz-word of choice.

Etymologically speaking, the use of the word tablet for these computers stems from the Old French 'tablete', a slab or flat surface for an inscription. In a way, the modern-day tablets have a similar basis to their 14th century ancestors.

Android: And you can't mention tablets without mentioning Android. The operating system, developed by Google, has been one of the major success stories of the year. Used on numerous smartphones and tablet computers, the Android operating system is open source and has seen thousands of applications and programs developed for it.

App: Furthermore, you can't mention tablets and Android without also mentioning 'apps'. Everyone is launching an app - a piece of software that runs on a smartphone or tablet. Seemingly, there are apps for everything; navigation, gaming, dating, social networking, business, finance; the list goes on and on. The app is certainly here to stay.

Netbook: It's a book, for surfing the internet; or a ‘netbook'. Another type of technology that has seen a huge rise in popularity and notoriety in 2010, the netbook is basically a low-powered laptop designed to be highly portable. Rather nicely, it is a piece of jargon that describes what it does quite well.

Of course, we've barely scratched the surface and there is a wealth of confusing jargon out there. Of course, the Computeractive Jargon Buster is the perfect way to answer any tech-jargon query.