aditionally, I'd like to get one free favicon, as to ensure I actually get a favicon, properly formated .ico file (which are way more different from .png files than just the .ico extention)
According to this[1], browsers support all the common image formats as favicon. But other than maybe SVG, the ICO file format has the advantage of being able to offer multiple dimensions and colors, so one doesn't need need to rely on the browser's resizing algorithm...