The range of colours displayable by a device is known as its ‘gamut’. On monitors, this is determined largely by the choice of backlight and red, green and blue filters used to create the picture. With printers it’s down to the formulation and colour of the printing inks along with the colour of the paper.
In computing terms, a gesture is a command initiated by a movement, usually of a mouse pointer or a finger on a touchscreen. The command depends on the path traced by the movement and sometimes the position on the screen, but does generally does not depend on interaction with icons or other on-screen items. Windows 8 introduces many gestures to Microsoft’s latest operating system such as swiping left from the right hand edge of the screen to bring up the Charms.
Created by Google and found on its Chromebook range of laptops, Chrome OS is an operating system that’s designed almost exclusively for use via the Chrome web browser. It also has the ability to run specially-written applications coded in HTML5.
Also known as Project Glass, Google Glass is a head-worn gadget incorporating a battery powered Head Up Display (HUD). Sitting just above the user’s right eye, it is able to display visual information in your field of view. This could be anything you like, but will usually be similar to the kind of information you would interact with on a smartphone. You can also use it to take pictures and record video of what you’re seeing.
A Google-branded mobile phone or tablet running the Android platform. The hardware is manufactured by various OEMs, including LG (Nexus 4), Asus (Nexus 7) and Samsung (Nexus 10).
Unlike the majority of Android devices, Nexus runs a vanilla copy of Android that hasn’t been customised by hardware manufacturers or mobile operators. Nexus devices are designed to make it easier for developers to install their own modified versions of Android and are the first to receive new versions of the mobile OS upon release by Google.
Short for General Public License, the license that accompanies some open source software that details how the software and its accompany source code can be freely copied, distributed and modified. The most widespread use of GPL is in reference to the GNU GPL, which is commonly abbreviated simply as GPL when it is understood that the term refers to the GNU GPL. One of the basic tenets of the GPL is that anyone who acquires the material must make it available to anyone else under the same licensing agreement.
The GPL does not cover activities other than the copying, distributing and modifying of the source code.
A GPL is also referred to as a copyleft, in contrast to a copyright that identifies the proprietary rights of material.