Techmeme: The story of WebP: How Google wants to speed up the web, one image at a time (Janko Roettgers/Gigaom)

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July 21, 2014, 8:05 AM

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Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

The story of WebP: How Google wants to speed up the web, one image at a time — Tired of slow web pages? So is Google, and the company thinks it has the key to speed up the web: smaller image files. Google's WebP image format aims to replace existing image file formats like JPEG with a smaller file size …

Nitasha Tiku / Valleywag:

Product Hunt Founder Explains Why The Hell He Joined Y Combinator — Industry obsessives talk about Product Hunt—a leaderboard that lets members vote on new apps, devices, and other assorted technologies—with a sense of gratefulness. Venture capitalists use its hand-picked daily list to find a diamond in the deluge.

Tweets: @nitashatiku and @hunterwalk

Jeyup S. Kwaak / Wall Street Journal:

Seoul Moves to Ban Uber, Plans Own App — UPDATE: Uber Monday evening called Seoul city government's earlier statement a sign that it lags behind in adopting what it called an innovation in transportation. “Comments like these show Seoul is in danger of remaining trapped in the past …

More: The Korea Times, Financial Times, Forbes, BusinessTech and NDTV News

Author Earnings:

Study: 31% of ebooks sold on Amazon are self-published; DRM harms sales at all price levels — July 2014 Author Earnings Report — It has been nearly half a year since we first pulled data for nearly every ranked ebook on Amazon.com's thousands of category bestseller lists.

More: Good E-Reader and Boing Boing

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

Edward Snowden Plans to Work on Privacy Tech — NSA leaker Edward Snowden says he plans to work on technology to preserve personal data privacy and called on programmers to join his efforts. — Speaking via a Google Hangout at the Hackers on Planet Earth Conference in New York …

More: SiliconANGLE, The Register, Motherboard, TechCrunch, ZDNet, BetaNews and Reuters

Kim Zetter / Wired:

How Ladar Levison and a convicted hacker aim to encrypt emails, including to and from fields, with Dark Mail — A Convicted Hacker and an Internet Icon Join Forces to Thwart NSA Spying — The internet is littered with burgeoning email encryption schemes aimed at thwarting NSA spying.

Tweets: @gmillard and @kgosztola

Shalini Ramachandran / Wall Street Journal:

Verizon FiOS, facing slowing growth, plans symmetrical upload speeds at no additional charge — Verizon FiOS Enhances Bandwidth for Uploads — Company Is Seeking to Race Ahead of Cable Industry in Its Internet Speeds — Verizon Communications Inc. 's FiOS TV and broadband service …

Jerin Mathew / International Business Times:

Huawei's First-Half Revenue up 19% While It Emerges as Major Smartphone Brand — China-based telecommunications equipment maker, Huawei Technologies, has reported a 19% increase in revenues for the first half of 2014 as consumers across the world become aware of its smartphone and tablet offerings, leading to higher sales.

More: BBC, ZDNet, Huawei Press Center, The Economic Times, MarketWatch and Reuters

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

New search engine Indexus indexes records from data breaches, mostly from sites young hackers frequent — Even Script Kids Have a Right to Be Forgotten — Indexeus, a new search engine that indexes user account information acquired from more than 100 recent data breaches, has caught many in the hacker underground off-guard.

More: The Verge and Engadget. Tweets: @_n1k_nak, @cert_polska_en and @teamcymru

Rohin Dhar / Priceonomics Blog:

Sequoia Capital will likely earn more from investing in YC companies than YC — The Big Winner from Y Combinator's Success? Sequoia Capital — Yesterday, Y Combinator's president, Sam Altman, that the seed investment firm had funded 716 companies that were currently valued collectively at around $30 billion.

More: CB Insights. Tweets: @jason and @bryce

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Mobile carriers have kept profits high, even after moving away from charging for voice minutes — Mobile Carriers Charging Differently, but Still Finding Plenty of Ways to Make Money — A few years ago, cellular companies charged for each call their customers made and gave most of them unlimited data.

Tweets: @inafried

Kate Cox / Consumerist:

From AT&T To Verizon: What The Web's Biggest Players Told The FCC About Net Neutrality — The FCC originally planned to stop taking comments about their net neutrality proposal on Tuesday. But after demand overwhelmed and crashed their antique IT system, they extended the deadline to 11:59 p.m. (EDT) tonight.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @nytimesbits

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