[ggm]

Kinda both. My immediate use is almost netpbm like: mask flags to blurred outline or gradient transparency maps, so you get the flag and the map blended together. I think I'd like to precompute them for all 250 economies. So thats a download use. But, if you provided good 64x64 icon sets (for instance) I imagine most web users would do a reference.

I'm assuming its cloudy/cdn backed, so it becomes both local and cached.