Wiki

CAPTCHA - CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a program that generates a graphic with a distorted string of alphanumeric characters that a human can type into a form field but a computer-generated program cannot read and interpret. This is a splendid and low/no cost way to test whether a contributor to a site is indeed human.

CAPTCHA does not ensure that the human is a nice person that will contribute in a positive way to the site, but it at least protects the site from automated programs built for malicious intentions.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - A stylesheet-based language used to style documents-most commonly xHTML and HTML. CSS is meant to separate content from presentation and to provide consistent styles throughout an entire application.

The CSS specification is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Adoption was slow at first, but CSS 2.1 has now been widely adopted by all modern Web browser applications.

CCD (Charge Coupled Device) - An electronic light sensor used in digital capture devices.

Change Management - Change Management is a best practice project management approach to implementing changes within an organization. Those changes could be staffing, workflow, technology, even material/premise changes.

Collaborative (collaboration) Software - A broad term describing software that allows some form of communication between users. Collaborative (collaboration) software generally falls into management (scheduling, project management, social networking), conferencing (IM, forums, shared document workflow), or communication (email, wikis, voice mail) tools.

Compiler - A program that processes statements written in a particular programming language and turns them into machine language or object code.

Content - Intellectual property with intrinsic value that is stored for reuse. Content can be of any type, including including unstructured text, structured data, images, video, and documents from any number of application programs.

Content can be broken out into different types. For instance, an article can be a content type as can a BLOG, a survey/poll, a gallery/slideshow, and so on.

Ideally all of these items are stored in a central repository and a search appliance is used to retrieve them.

Content Management System (CMS) - A software platform used to create, manage, and present intellectual property (content) across different publishing channels. These channels include but are not limited to Web/Internet, Print formats, and mobile devices.

Type of software programs that allow organizations to publish Website content more effectively are called Web Content Management Systems (WCMS).

Some companies build internal applications to manage catalog data for the purpose of publishing to Web, Print, etc. These systems are alternately called Catalog Management Systems and "Content Management Systems." while they have the charactistics of content management, the phrase catalog management is more descriptive and should be used. When that data is delivered to a Website for the purpose of selling products, the phrase "E-Commerce System" is more appropriate. 

Author's note: Acronyms are proliferating in the realm of technology, some driven by need, others by sales and marketing. DPCI recommends keeping it simple by using the term or keyphrase that is most specific to the objectives that the technology is meant to achieve.

Copyleft - A legal term that specifies that anyone who redistributes software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft is a critical characteristic of the GNU General Public License Agreement that much of the open source community has embraced.

Cross-Platform - An ambiguous term that indicates that an application is operable on more than one platform. This can include Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD among others. Most Web Applications are considered Cross-Platform because they are usable from browsers developed for each operating system.