Resizing pictures -- a public service

Because the private Internet service here in Afghanistan is rather slow, I have come to appreciate those who resize their pictures before sending them.

There have been many times when I've gotten pictures from people who 1.) took snapshots with their camera on maximum resolution, and 2.) sent those ultra-mega-sized pictures to me by email. It wasn't so big a deal in the U.S., though -- it just took a few moments longer to download and I could resize them myself.

Today, however, a friend sent a 22-picture zip file to me, with each one taken at 3000x2000 resolution and occupying over 2.2 megabytes of storage. The 57 MB zip file took three hours to download.

Part of it is bad consumerism on our part. Yeah, it's cool to brag about your camera's gazillion megapixel resolution, but if you don't have a tripod, you can't help lose that high resolution through blur. And sure, you might get some opportunities for some awesome scenery shots that pay off, but dude -- I don't need to zoom in on your pores.

I'm trying to do my part. For my own storage purposes, I take pictures at 2048x1536 resolution unless I'm shooting something really sweet. And the pictures I post here are mostly 400x300 with links to 800x600 -- what fits on a computer screen nicley. They're typically less than 100KB in size -- 95% smaller than the ones I got today.

I do that because it helps with download speed and because I'm trying to make the 'Net work better for everybody. As a matter of public service, I encourage everyone to do the same.