No more “20% time” at Google – “Google’s “20% time,” which allows employees to take one day a week to work on side projects, effectively no longer exists. That’s according to former Google employees, one who spoke to Quartz on the condition of anonymity and others who have said it publicly.”

Increasing public access to federally funded research – This is not new, but for researchers and data nerds alike it is worth reading again – and following developments! You can find the official memo here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf

A tiny book!  – from University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections.
Rosen, Rebecca J. “Revealed: A Book the Size of a Ladybug.” The Atlantic. 7 Aug. 2013. Web. 22 Aug. 2013.

The Getty launches Open Content Images: 4,687 images from their collection are now available for free use under their open content license.

WebKit Has Implemented srcset: Right now there’s no good way to switch the image in an HTML <img> tag for a different browser (for example, giving a smaller image to a mobile browser). The srcset attribute solves most of the issues with this. See also: Mat’s talk on the subject.

QR Codes vs. URLs. In related news, Microsoft Tag is shutting down. Did you even know that Microsoft Tag existed?

Internet Trends 2013 

“Flipped” classes – A clear-eyed look at “flipped” teaching, from CHE.  The author argues flipped classes require more classroom support than a traditional lecture course, and more contact with and more engagement from students, but it can also mean more learning.

Ebbeler, Jennifer. “‘Introduction to Ancient Rome,’ the Flipped Version.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 22 July 2013. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Web. 22 July 2013. (http://chronicle.com/article/Introduction-to-Ancient/140475/)

Google Play adding Textbook Rentals this August

Web Content

2013 Noel Levitz e-Expectations Report: 98% of prospective students report that they will open an email from a school they are interested in attending. 20% have downloaded that school’s mobile app.

How Gmail’s New Inbox is Affecting Open Rates: Our list emails won’t be able to avoid getting stuffed in the new Promotions tab, but it only appears to be decreasing open rates from 13% to 12% so far.

Portal Websites: The Great Content Divide: “Segmenting content by audience type introduces a slew of content problems most organizations are not prepared for. While it’s important to prioritize and plan for your target audiences, it’s a risky business limiting content and user options. Doing so limits your audiences’ ability to learn and discover and your content’s potential to inform and delight.”

Web Development

Optimizing the Critical Rendering Path: Why we need to start thinking about CSS declarations in the header instead of in separate files and asynchronous JavaScript file includes for faster mobile rendering.

Data URIs are 6x Slower than Source Linking: Including the image data on a page as a base64 encoded string is slower than using an image tag because even if it saves HTTP requests, the browser has to decode the image on every page load.

CSS3 And Flexbox: Flexbox allows for better control over positioning and sizing of page elements. Right now there aren’t good ways to vertically center content or make two boxes the same height on the page. Flexbox solves that, but isn’t well supported in the browser yet.

The web is getting a vibration API