According to Wikipedia, "the data URI scheme is a URI scheme that provides a way to include data in line in web pages as if they were external resources." That means that rather than having a URL telling the browser where to find the image you actually have the image data right there on the page so the browser does not have to make an extra request to get it. This particular module is only concerned with images referenced in CSS, so for an example let's look at a declaration in Garland's CSS:
ul li.expanded {
background: transparent url(images/menu-expanded.gif) no-repeat 1px .35em;
}
The actual process is a bit more involved than that, but this is the general concept. By default, embedded images are placed in a separate CSS file to allow for parallel rendering of other site styles while the relatively large image data is being downloaded.
Panels is a very flexible module, you can add almost anything to regions of your layout. Almost but not everything, until now, it was very difficult to add files, links, and images to panes. This module started as a way to add CCK fields to panes, but it was hard, so instead, I decided to use the FAPI and imitate some of the most popular fields. Currently, you can add Files, Images, Links, Text and soon Embedded Videos to panes.
It mimics CCK Fields but they are not CCK fields, Views won't be aware of them, and you can't extend or configure the fields you want to add.
This is a CCK (Drupal 6) / Field API (Drupal 7) field type that will count the number of nodereferences to a particular node. The count is updated both when the node that is being counted is saved, as well as when a node that is referencing the node being counted is saved, updated or deleted. It will count references from individual nodereference fields as well as aggregate counts from multiple nodereference fields to the same node.
Also see Entity reference count for a version of this module that works with entity references.