Terms and definitions 185
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USB
Universal Serial Bus. A plug-and-play interface between a
computer and add-on devices (such as audio players, joysticks,
keyboards, phones, scanners, and printers). With USB, a new
device can be added to your computer without having to add an
adapter card or even having to turn the computer off.
USSD
Unstructured Supplementary Services Data. Narrow-band GSM
data service. For example entering *79*1234# might return the
stock price for stock 1234.
vCal; vCalendar
vCalendar defines a transport and platform-independent format
for exchanging calendar and scheduling information for use in
PIMs/PDAs and group schedulers. vCalendar is specified by
IETF.
vCard
vCard automates the exchange of personal information typically
found on a traditional business card, for use in applications such
as Internet mail, voice mail, Web browsers, phone applications,
call centres, video conferencing, PIMs /PDAs, pagers, fax,
office equipment, and smart cards. vCard is specified by IETF.
VGA
Video Graphics Array. Graphics standard introduced by IBM,
having a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels.
VPN
Virtual Private Network. A private network that is configured
within a public network. A VPN appear as private national or
international network to the customer, but physically shares a
backbone trunk with other customers. VPNs enjoy the security
of a private network via access control and encryption, while
taking advantage of the economies of scale and built-in
management facilities of large public networks. Today, there is
tremendous interest in VPNs over the Internet, especially due to
the constant threat of hacker attacks.
WAP
Wireless Application Protocol is a specification for a set of
communication protocols to standardise the way that wireless
devices, such as cellular phones and radio transceivers, can be
used for Internet access, including e-mail, the World Wide Web
and newsgroups.
WAV
A Wave file is an audio file format, created by Microsoft, that
has become a standard PC audio file format for everything from
system and game sounds to CD-quality audio. A Wave file is
identified by a file name extension of WAV (.wav).
WBXML
Wireless Binary Extensible Markup Language.