ALSO CALLED: URI and Universal Resource Identifiers
DEFINITION: To paraphrase the World Wide Web Consortium, Internet space is inhabited by many points of content. A URI (Uniform Resource Identifier; pronounced YEW-AHR-EYE) is the way you identify any of those points of content, whether it be a page of text, a video or sound clip, a still or animated image, or a program. The most common form of URI is the Web page address, which is a particular  … 
Definition continues below.

UNIFORM RESOURCE IDENTIFIERS DEFINITION (continued): …  form or subset of URI called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A URI typically describes:

• The mechanism used to access the resource
• The specific computer that the resource is housed in
• The specific name of the resource (a file name) on the computer

For example, this URI:

http://www.w3.org/Icons/WWW/w3c_main.gif

identifies a file that can be accessed using the Web protocol application, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, ("http://") that is housed on a computer named "www.w3.org" (which can be mapped to a unique Internet address). … 
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