Google offers up to a 40% discount on all JPEGs -- with new WebP format!
Lee Mathews, Download Squad, October 1, 2010.

Google has announced the release of a new compressed image format for the web, called WebP, which will reduce the bandwidth required to send images by 40 percent. The format was announced on CNet using a PNG (since web browsers don't support WebP yet). More from Mashable.

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The Priciple of Indirection
Jon Udell, O'Reilly Radar, October 1, 2010.

A nice description of the concepts of 'pass-by-vale' and 'pass-by-reference' for non-programmers, an application of this to day-to-day life, and a good argument to show why pass-by-reference, though used by a small minority, is actually a superior way to pass information:
- there's an authoritative source for the information
- this source is always up-to-date
- the source is social; we can connect by reference to it
- the source is collaborative; anyone can add to it

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Presenting From Bed
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, September 26, 2010.

Alan Levine postulates that a look at the five billion photos of Flickr would show that people are becoming better photographers. Certainly this is true in my own case, as it is probably of most others for whom cost is no longer a barrier to photography. But it's also a good lesson, he notes, that learning takes time. "Even if I am spending 2 hours a day doing daily photo activity, its going to take me more than 14 years to reach that mark... it just re-iterates to importance of keeping at the practice."

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Part-time annual-leave – an experiment in WFH
David F. Flanders, Weblog, September 26, 2010.

I can't help myself - I love the little 'working from home' pod illustrated in this article (see left). Perhaps it's from my days of wanting fully immersive video games (my life is a video game now) or perhaps it's from my dream of coding the ultimate Star Trek game. This just appears on so many levels. I have no idea what it would be like to actually work in one - but if you were working at home, and could get up and make coffee whenever you wanted, it might not seem so constraining.

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