30 November 2007

Venus & Mars Express

Venus Express has been making the most detailed study of the planet’s thick and complex atmosphere to date. The latest findings highlight the features that make Venus unique in the Solar System and provide fresh clues as to how the planet is - despite everything - a more Earth-like planetary neighbour than one could have imagined.


Venus: Earth’s twin planet?

ESA’s Venus Express has revealed Venus as never before. For the first time, scientists are able to investigate from the top of its atmosphere, down nearly to the surface. They have shown it to be a planet of surprises that may once have been more Earth-like, and still is, to a certain extent.



Mars Express

This HRSC image provides a perspective view of residual water ice on the floor of Vastitas Borealis Crater on Mars.











The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

At high resolution, terrain in the transition region between bright and dark hemispheres on Saturn's moon Iapetus reveals a spotty appearance reminiscent of a Dalmatian. The bright material on the frozen surface of Iapetus, 1,468 kilometers (912 miles) across, is water ice, and the dark material is likely carbonaceous in composition.

29 November 2007

HoneySoul.com - Giving Soul Music A Voice

“Anything great always starts with love,” says soul-music aficionado Vonnie “Honey” Woods, whose means of expressing her sincere, simple passion for the music and its artists, has grown from a small mailing list about new music finds, to an internet show called Soul 2 Soul.

Example:


After 40 interviews in one year - which Honey prefers to call “conversations” (with soul luminaries such as Maurice White, Chaka Khan, India.Arie, Teena Marie, Ron Isley, Meshell Ndegeocello, Brian McKnight, Marcus Miller, Van Hunt, Amel Larrieux, Donell Jones, Dwele and Syleena Johnson), Honey shows no signs of slowing down.

The former banker and self-described “bridge … between good old soul music and those of us who love it,” is known for her command of “the art of conversation,” for making the music the star (”It’s never been about who I could talk to, but what I can reveal about music”) and her emotion-centered definition of soul music. “From R&B to hip hop to jazz to gospel to rock, if you can feel it, I call it soul.” Honey sums up her platform this way: “If you’re a soul artist making meaningful music, let’s talk.”

24 November 2007

Chart chooser from Juice analytics

The Extreme presentation Blog is known for presentation recommendations, along with a few other sites like Stephen Few's Perceptual Edge or Junk Charts. Some have also taken to create great charts, like Juice Analytics, maani.us, Adobe's flex charts or Engauge's Digitalizer.

Some time ago I mentioned a sites to find nice Excel charts. Now there is a new option, built on the of popular Chart Chooser diagram. Well, here it is, live, thanks to their hard work: http://www.chartchooser.com/. Juice Analytics are also providing customized versions of the chart chooser, which will link with your own company's databases to automatically create or update charts. See their post at www.juiceanalytics.com/writing.
You could also check out Process trends, Exeluser or Xcelsius.