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CAPTCHA

Definition:

CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart and is a spam prevention tool used on Internet web sites. CAPTCHA commonly appears on blog sites as a series of random letters or numbers, sometimes with a squiggly line through them, that a human must replicate before submitting a comment on the blog site.

This extra step of human intervention prevents malicious robots or scripts from automatically submitting spam comments on a blog without the author's permission. In theory, CAPTCHA numbers and letters are unreadable by computers meaning a comment can only be submitted if a human verifies the numbers and letters.

Here's a word you may not know...

API

Applicating Programming Interface, or API for short, is a term used to describe tools that help developers build software programs that work together. Although APIs are designed for developers and are therefore very techie in nature, APIs are good for users because they make it easier for them to learn new programs. For example, Microsoft has APIs for developers to use when they create programs to run on Microsoft Windows, which is how many different programs can use the same File Open or Save dialog boxes familiar to most users.