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  • Electronic commerce
    The electronic transfer of value across the Internet in exchange for the delivery of a service or product. Electronic commerce integrates communications, data management and security services, allowing enterprises and consumers to freely communicate and make purchases from their selection of vendors.
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  • Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
    A standard for the electronic exchange of business documents, such as invoices and purchase orders.
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  • Electronic goods
    Software or information products that can be downloaded over the Internet from a fulfillment server. See also physical goods.
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  • Electronic offer
    An electronic offer is a description of an item for sale on the Internet. Typically, it contains information such as the price of an item, the quantity sold, a short description of the item, whether the item is taxable, and so forth. An electronic offer can describe either an electronic good (information that can be transmitted to the purchaser over the Internet) or a physical good (a physical item that must be shipped to the purchaser). Electronic offers enable an important separation of selling concerns from payment concerns. The merchant's electronic storefront focuses on, for example, presenting goods in the most attractive possible way, setting prices, and managing inventory. The commerce service provider focuses on, for example, authenticating orders, performing tax and shipping calculations, interacting with the credit card issuing bank, getting payment, and providing online customer status service.
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  • Electronic receipt
    An electronic receipt is a proof that an item was purchased via the Internet. For an electronic good (information that can be transmitted to the purchaser over the Internet), the electronic receipt allows the purchaser to download the item from a merchant's fulfillment server. For a physical good (a physical item that must be shipped to the purchaser), the electronic receipt allows the purchaser to access up-to-date information on the status of the order (date shipped,etc.).
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  • Email (electronic mail)
    A method of electronically passing messages from one computer user to another, typically over computer networks.
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  • Emoticon
    Clusters of punctuation such as : ) and : > that are used to set the tone for the sentence that precedes them.
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  • Encryption
    The cryptographic transformation of data into a form that conceals the data's original meaning. The purpose is to ensure data confidentiality by keeping information hidden from anyone for whom it was not intended, including those who can see the encrypted data.
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  • Entanglement
    Entanglement refers to the fact that two or more particles, after interacting, can only be described jointly. For example, pairs of photons created in a nonlinear crystal are entangled. Even after they have separated long distances (potentially many kilometers in an optical fiber) they can maintain entanglement. Entanglement serves as the engine for quantum information processing, enabling quantum teleportation, quantum cryptography, quantum computation and other quantum information tasks.
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  • Ethernet
    A common method of networking computers in a Local Area Network (LAN). Ethernet can handle from 10,000,000-100,000,000 bits-per-second (or 10-100 megabits-per-second) and can be used with almost any kind of computer.
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  • Exit capacity
    The amount of network bandwidth a Web Hosting provider has coming out of their data centers.
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  • Expiration
    In cryptography, no matter how strong a key is, it is possible to break it, given enough time. Any key, therefore, should always be issued with an expiration date, that is, a time after which it is no longer valid. For electronic offers and electronic receipts, it is the date that the offer or receipt is no longer valid, typically one month after the expiration date of the key used to generate the offer. Date when a payment card is no longer valid. A card's expiration date is usually embossed on the card and encoded in its magnetic stripe.
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  • Extranet
    A controlled business computer networking application that uses Internet technology to link businesses with their suppliers, customers, or other businesses that share common goals.
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