One major headache for new Internet users must be all the terminology, buzzwords and acronyms you run up against.

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC) is a searchable dictionary of acronyms, jargon, programming languages, tools, architectures, operating systems, networking, theory, mathematics, telecoms, institutions, companies, projects, products, history, in fact anything to do with computing.

Best of all, it is completely FREE to use.

FOLDOC is the place on the net to go with questions like "What does RTFM stand for?", "Is IBM on the Web?", "Where can I find out about ISDN?" and so on

It aims to provide a one-stop source of encyclopedia-like information on:

• Definitions on computing terms, communications, and networking.
• Many useful cross-references and pointers to related resources on the Internet.
• Bibliographical reference to paper publications.
• Current hardware and software products. Companies, institutions and more.

FOLDOC was started in 1985 and has grown, with the help of over 600 contributing experts, to contain over 10,000 definitions totaling over 3.6 megabytes of information.

It is freely available on the Internet via the World-Wide Web. It currently handles more than 10,000 WWW queries per day.

FOLDOC was started and is maintained by Denis Howe as a free service to the Internet community. FOLDOC can be accessed at InstantWeb and its Original London site (convenient for European visitors). A project is currently underway to translate it into Spanish.

Visit FOLDOC and test its capabilities