data exhaust
n.—Gloss: the incidental statistics and information that accumulate when people interact with a system, process, or event, such as when tracking visitor interaction on a web site. «Hansen also touted the utility of absorbing all the information users provide more passively. “We get a tremendous amount of information out of user patterns on our site. The ’data exhaust’ as they call it, is a tremendously powerful tool. Once we can hook this up with print pubs, this is going to take things to a whole new level.”» —“AMC 2007: User-Generated Content Cues: ‘Set Up the Scenario and Then Get Out of the Way’” FishbowlNY Oct. 30, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In the 1970s, physicists predicted the discovery of two quarks called T and B for top and bottom. Some poetically-minded physicists argued that the T and B quarks should instead be called truth and beauty, but the terms top and bottom eventually won...
A Houston, Texas, woman wants to know, “Why are there so many different dictionaries?” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Why Are There So Many Dictionaries?” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hey, this is...