Where night meets day

Got this photograph from one of my friends. It is absolutely stunning and so I thought I should share it with all of you out there. The best thing I like about the photograph is that the earth looks so serene.
Note: The text below the photograph says that the photo was taken during the last mission of the Columbia. But it seems that this is not true. Nevertheless, the photograph is awesome and definitely worth a look.
Sunset over Europe - click to enlarge (356 kb).

This photo is absolutely beautiful. Be sure to read the text below to have a better understanding of what you are viewing. It is historic too as this is the last mission for Columbia…
The photograph was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day. The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities’ lights.
The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert.
Note that the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that’s it’s still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid.
The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness.
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further South, close to the farthest western point of Africa , are the Cape Verde Islands.
Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during day time and night time.
To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

CNN offers free video

Starting yesterday (June 18), CNN now offers free news video on its website. This is two days ahead of the original launch date, which was supposed to be June 20. Previously, it used to charge $4.95/month for access to news videos. The videos are supported by 15-second commercials. Also, if you go to CNN.com now, you will notice that the logo now has the phrase “With Free Video”.

www.cnn.com/video
This is a welcome step. I had always wanted to watch news videos on CNN. I know that BBC has always offered free news videos. I checked out a couple of the videos. They are of fairly good quality but occasionally, the video seemed to be a bit jumpy. This might be due to the heavy load of users trying to check out the new free video feature on the website.
Related Links:
6/18/2005: CNN.com debuts free video
5/16/2005: CNN.com to Make Its Online Video Free (Yahoo News/AP)
5/16/2005: CNN.com to offer free video, new premium service

EPIC 2014 – GoogleZon, Google Grid

EPIC 2014 - click to enlarge (8 kb).If you have not watched it already, go ahead and watch it. The story is definitely “fascinating, amusing and unnerving”. Have a look.
http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/
Pick a random mirror

“In the year 2014,The New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate’s fortunes have waned. What happened to the news? And what is EPIC?”

The ‘Evolving Personalized Information Construct’ (EPIC) is a look at how the media industry might be like in 2014. It is an 8 minute flash presentation by the Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson.
It also talks about GoogleZon (the alliance of Google and Amazon in 2008) and the Google Grid.
Related Links:
News.com article