I noticed an interesting revision to Google’s image search functionality today: the dimensions, file format, and host site of an image are now hidden by default, only to be revealed when a user hovers over a particular picture. This is new right? At least I’ve never noticed it before.
The change is sort of nice, as it trims down on the amount of data a user need to sort through when they’re browsing images, but part of me misses the old style of Google’s image search. A great majority of the images that end up on Crashpod were meticulously unearthed from Google’s image tool, and having an instant bird’s eye view of how large the fair I was looking at was key.

This new format tends to breed situations where I’ll see a perfect image that’d like to post, only to meet with disappointment as I mouse over the preview and see that it’s a 40×40 thumbnail. Of course one can still tell Google if they’re looking for small, medium, or large images, but that ability to have a generous hopper of all the pictures on the web concerning John Matrix and his venomous rival Bennett is ideal.

This is progress I guess, I just wish the big G would let me toggle their new functionality on and off.

This is a great video that boils down the technical and philosophic history of the web, in a uniquely engaging visual fashion. The beginning is a great summary of what my job focuses around, and that’s why I was originally going to post this… but as the video stretches on it presents a really powerful allegory about where the web is going, and how it’s going to alter what we think of entertainment and ownership.

I’ll admit it, I teared up a bit at the end.

We can land a man on the moon yes. But this? This could be simply insurmountable.