Computer and Internet Acronyms Quiz

Answer: Compact Disc Read Only Memory

CD-ROM is a type of optical disc that originated in 1982 in Japan. A computer can read from, but not write to, a CD-ROM disc. Most CD-ROMs have a maximum capacity in the 650MB to 900MB range.

Answer: COmmon Business Oriented Language

COBOL has been around in various forms since 1959, but was standardized in the late 1960s and became the most commonly used programming language on legacy mainframe computers. Grace Hopper is known as the mother of COBOL.

Answer: Internet Movie Database

IMDb was acquired by Amazon (where I previously worked) in 1990. True story: I was on a cruise ship where this question was given during trivia and the "answer" (incorrect) was International Movie Database. I asked the quizmaster where he got the answer and he said he got it from his grandmother. So not all trivia "answers" being used on cruise ships have been fully validated with true SME (subject matter expert--another acronym) authorities.

Answer: Universal Serial Bus

USB was originally released in 1996 and has become a standard communications port on a variety of devices. Prior to the introduction of the USB standard, most devices had proprietary interfaces, requiring separate cables and connections for each device. By 2019, there were three generations of USB specifications: 1.x, 2.x and 3.x.

Answer: Secure

HTTPS is used for secure transactions on the Internet and uses TLS (Transport Layer Security) or its predecessor SSL (Secure Socket Layer). Two more acronyms for you!

Answer: Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

BASIC has been around almost as long as COBOL (since 1964, while COBOL was not standardized until the late 1960s, but in use as early at 1959). Many students first learned programing fundamentals using BASIC programming language.

Answer: High Definition Multimedia Interface

HDMI specification was first used in consumer TVs in 2004. HDMI is a digital interface that has replaced audio video standards. While there used to be a need for several cords to connect to a TV (at least one for video and usually two or more for audio), HDMI allows both digital video and audio to be transmitted through the use of a single connection.

Answer: Audio Video Interleave

This is a tough one. Most people know .AVI as a graphics file format, but don't know what the acronym means. AVI is a multimedia format that was introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows software. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file which allows for synchronous audio/video playback.

Answer: Joint Photographic Expert Group

This is another tough one. Most people know the acronym as .jpeg or .jpg as a graphics file format, but don't know what the acronym means. JPEG is the most common image format used by digital cameras and other photographic image capture devices and is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the Web.

Answer: Graphical User Interface

Pronounced "gooey" (as in soft, stretchable, sticky candy), GUI refers to any user interface that uses graphics to interact and has largely replaced command line interfaces (CLIs). We commonly think of Apple Macintosh as one of the first computers to successfully implement the use of a GUI as well as subsequent Windows operating systems, although the Xerox Star 8010 workstation is generally credited as being the first commercial GUI.