Interesting bits from around the web as uncovered by the Odopod Code Forum.

WebM
A project dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone.

• Cool: Creating open standards. Bringing high quality video content across all devices. That big influential companies are behind this initiative.
• Not cool: Open doesn’t necessarily mean free. Its uncomfortably close relationship to H.264 is causing some patent concerns. Also, lacking any sort of DRM might mean losing the battle since a lot of content providers need their IP to be protected.

Responsive web design
Hello CSS3 Media Queries. Creating smart and flexible grid layouts that gracefully adapt to different screen properties.

• Cool: css3 media queries and flexible-grid layouts allow you to tailor your layout to a device's physical characteristics without the need for separate stylesheets or subdomains.
• Not cool: Media queries are not supported by certain browsers (guess which!), necessitating JavaScript solutions to target the stragglers.

Dynamic Sprite
Utility AS3 Class for easy runtime asset management.

• Cool: We see this being very useful in some situations. A couple examples would be: sites that allow users to customize the UI with themes or when localizing sites with not a lot of text (and translating teams are used to changing swfs).
• Not cool: If your site has a lot of text content, this is probably not a very feasible way to setup your project. In that case, going back to having all your localized copy in XML would be more reasonable.

Darkroom Beta
All-in-one web image processor.

• Cool: With the evolution of web standards, browser’s capabilities and emerging technologies over the years, we’re seeing more and more applications built as web apps as opposed to desktop apps. This concept was talked about at Google I/O this year. Cool use of newer capabilities such as localStorage and Canvas.
• Not cool: Performance is still not quite up to par with desktop applications (we’re still working inside a browser). Since it’s in beta, we’ll probably see this improve as it gets closer to being released.

RaphaëlJS
JavaScript vector graphics library.

• Cool: Very simple and easy to use API.
• Not Cool: gRaphaël has no documentation yet.

ByteArray Access to NetStream in Flash Player
• Cool: This opens up a whole new gamut of possible runtime video manipulations without requiring a server round trip.
• Not cool: Only available in FP 10.1+ and only FLV as a container file format is supported.

HTML5 vs. Flash
Head-to-head examples.

• Cool: It's funny, we all need a sense of humor.
• Not cool: We're tired of the HTML5 vs Flash war (each technology has its place). The examples seem biased but we're not taking this that seriously!

Apple Location Based Service Patent
"Delivers a location based service to information savvy iPhone users that wish to receive temporary retail and service-based applications."

• Cool: Making relevant information more easily accessible.
• Not Cool: Not so sure about the delivery mechanism proposed of apps coming and going on your device. There's also the potential of app spamming overload.