"In an effort to speed up page loading, Google has introduced an experimental new image format called WebP. The format is intended to reduce the file size of lossy images without compromising the quality. Google's tests, which involved converting a million images, show that the format delivers an average reduction in file size of 39 percent." | more

Russell Kirsch says he’s sorry.

More than 50 years ago, Kirsch took a picture of his infant son and scanned it into a computer. It was the first digital image: a grainy, black-and-white baby picture that literally changed the way we view the world. With it, the smoothness of images captured on film was shattered to bits.

The square pixel became the norm, thanks in part to Kirsch, and the world got a little bit rougher around the edges.