Imagery Info Deal Between Google and NASA

Google Inc. and NASA Ames Research Center said that they have finalized an agreement to deliver more of the space agency's imagery and information through the Internet's leading search engine.

The collaboration marks another step in a partnership announced 15 months ago when Google unveiled plans to build a 1 million-square-foot campus at the NASA center, located a few miles south of the company's Mountain View headquarters.

Under the arrangement, Ames will feed Google with its weather forecasting information, three-dimensional maps of the moon and Mars, and real-time tracking of the International Space Station and space shuttle flights so the pictures and data are available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Google already draws upon some of NASA's imagery to provide Web surfers with interactive tours of Mars as part of a 9-month-old service.

This agreement between NASA and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a statement.

Ames and Google also have vowed to work together to solve complex computing problems, including large-scale data management.

"Partnering with NASA made perfect sense for Google, as it has a wealth of technical expertise and data that will be of great use to Google as we look to tackle many computing issues on behalf of our users," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement.

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New Release of Microsoft - Pro Vista

For the first time in five years, Microsoft Corp. is finally unveiling a new system for operating personal computers. Now the company must persuade PC buyers that the launch really matters to them. Beginning Thursday, businesses that buy Windows licenses in bulk have first crack at the new operating system, called Vista. Consumers can get Vista on home PCs beginning Jan. 30.

Microsoft and computer vendors contend that Vista will make Windows machines more secure, powerful and graphically dynamic, especially when combined with other products Microsoft is releasing simultaneously. Those include new back-end server software for businesses, as well as Office 2007, which brings sweeping changes to widely used programs such as Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint.

Much is at stake for Microsoft. Most of its revenue and almost all of its profit comes from Windows and Office, funding the company's sexier ventures in video games and music players. But even with all the touted improvements, analysts expect Vista to only gradually emerge, especially in big organizations where upgrading can be a costly, complicated affair. Gartner Dataquest predicts that it will be 2010 before Vista outnumbers the previous operating system, Windows XP, on business computers.

PC makers say Vista will enable computers to do things that previously were difficult or costly. For example, Lenovo Group Ltd., the world's No. 3 PC maker, says Vista greatly enhances data-backup tools it builds into its machines.

"All those capabilities are going to be one step better with Vista," said Clain Anderson, Lenovo's director of software peripherals.

A company with 10,000 employees, for example, likely has 1,000 business applications, many of which need to be tested on Vista before a company can switch its PCs to the new operating system, said Gartner analyst Michael Silver. That process often takes 12 to 18 months and lots of labor by the technology staff. In the meantime, the last operating system, Windows XP, works just fine for most companies -- especially with a security-enhancing patch known as Service Pack 2 that Microsoft released in 2004.

But many buyers want more dramatic reasons to change their PCs.
Kamal Anand, chief technology officer for TradeStone Software Inc., a Gloucester, Mass.-based provider of supply-chain software, examined test versions of Vista and Office and found "no compelling need" to upgrade his company's 100 PCs and laptops anytime soon. Instead, Anand expects Vista and Office to slowly permeate TradeStone as it buys new PCs for employees in coming years.

"Nobody wants to go through the extra time and effort and money to upgrade an existing, well-working system," he said. The programs in Office 2007 have been overhauled in many ways. Generally they can make it easier for people to collaborate on documents and to manage information from multiple sources. Excel in particular packs a wallop, with vastly increased number-crunching abilities. The Outlook e-mail program performs noticeably faster searches for tidbits buried in messages.

Some Office programs also have scrapped their familiar menu structure in favor of a "ribbon" atop the screen that reorders how command choices are presented to the user. While that new interface unlocks many features that were hard to find in previous generations of Office software, it will require some time to get used to, which might give tech buyers pause.

Another potential drag for Office is that the world has changed considerably since the last major release in 2003. Inexpensive, open-source alternatives to Office have gained traction. And rivals such as Google Inc. are increasingly delivering spreadsheets, word processing and other tools for free over the Internet, an attractive choice for smaller companies.

But Office 2007 holds few such attractions for his company. Tabblo employees have largely abandoned Excel and Word for free programs on the Web, praising the flexibility that comes with having files stored online. Just about the only Office program Rodriguez still uses is PowerPoint for presentations.

At Tabblo Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup that lets people assemble, print and share online photo collections, CEO Antonio Rodriguez expects to upgrade many, though not all, of the company's 25 PCs to Vista throughout 2007. Tabblo's staff expects Vista to make it easier to back up files and synch data over multiple computers. Rodriguez and crew also have energetically adopted Microsoft's latest Web browser, Internet Explorer 7.

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Answers Services Abandon by Google

Google Inc. doesn't have all the answers -- a fact underscored by the Internet search leader's decision to abandon a 4-year-old service that hired researchers to field questions on everything from school homework to sports trivia. The retreat, announced in a notice posted on Google's Web site late Tuesday night, represents a rare victory for rival Yahoo Inc.

It also may signal Google's intention to refocus on its core search engine, a moneymaking machine that generates virtually all its profits. Google executives have recently expressed worries about having too many disjointed products scattered across its Web site.

Despite those distractions, Google still holds a large lead over Yahoo in basic Internet search. Google has parlayed that advantage into more rapid profit growth that has lifted its stock price to new heights while Yahoo shares have slumped badly for most of the year.

But Yahoo appears to have outsmarted Google with a free online answer service that has grown rapidly since its introduction less than a year ago. Unlike Google's offering, Yahoo's service doesn't charge money. Instead, Yahoo appeals to the vanity of smart people to ferret out the answers to esoteric questions like "What has Alexander Graham Bell invented other than the telephone?"

• Microsoft Corp. and several specialty Web sites like Keen.com, Answers.com and Answerbag.com also compete against Yahoo and Google in this highly specialized niche of Internet search.
  
• Google's service required its users to pay a researcher anywhere from $2 to $200 to chase down the answers to minutiae like "How many tyrannosaurs are in a gallon of gasoline?"

The Mountain View-based company collected a 50-cent commission on each question, with the remainder going to one of the roughly 800 researchers who have responded to questions since Google co-founder Larry Page conceived the service in 2002. Although it started later, Yahoo's answer service quickly eclipsed Google's. By October, the market share of Yahoo Answers was about 24 times greater than Google's service, estimated Hitwise, a research company that tracks Internet traffic patterns.

Yahoo's users are becoming so adept at answering questions that their responses sometimes even appear on the first results page of Google's own search engine. In its first 11 months, Yahoo's service has accumulated about 160 million answers, according to the Sunnyvale-based company. Google didn't elaborate on the reasons for dropping its service, which will stop accepting questions later this week. The answers to previously asked questions will remain available.

"Google Answers was a great experiment which provided us with a lot of material for developing future products to serve our users," software engineers Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher wrote in the closure notice. "We'll continue to look for new ways to improve the search experience and to connect people to the information they want.

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Fabulous Gift on this Christmas

DVDs make great gifts because they are easy to wrap and are loved by all

Christmas is all about the giving and gifters can say plenty with the right choice of special DVDs sets for family, friends and loved ones. We offer some guidance, suggestions for making an impact as you shop early and often.

Shoppers this holiday will be greeted by an unprecedented mix of box sets and special editions matching and surpassing the bar set last year by HBO’s $300 pink suede-covered 20-disc Sex and the City complete-series collector’s gift set.

The number of new TV DVD box sets alone is 2 per cent ahead of last year’s record pace, when more than 550 were released, according to The DVD Release Report. It’s true that in many cases studios are doing this to repack previously released single DVDs — and reap some profits before new high-definition video formats take off (they hope).

This year, more series get that treatment, including the Homicide: Life on the Street 35-disc megaset (A&E Home Video, $300) and Six Feet Under: The Complete Series gift set (HBO, 25 discs, $280). Movies, too, are being bundled into boxes that extol various themes (Fox’s $99 Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection and Warner’s $29 Classic Comedy Teams Collection) or chronicle the careers of actors (The Paul Newman Collection, Warner, $60) or filmmakers (Preston Sturges: The Filmmaker Collection, Universal, $60).

But customers do benefit from buying in bulk: A typical DVD costs $12 to $17 individually, but discs can cost $5 or less in a set. “It’s a win-win for both the studios and the consumer,” says DVD Release Report editor Ralph Tribbey.

Gift for Someone Special

• Individual NFL Films highlight DVDs such as San Francisco 49ers:
  The Complete History (Warner, $27; other teams include the Green Bay Packers, Oakland Raiders and Denver Broncos), because as the NFL playoffs
  
• King Kong Deluxe Extended Edition (Universal, $35), because it adds 13 minutes to the already epic-length theatrical edition that features outrageous battles, stunts, creatures and, let’s face it, a scantily clad Naomi Watts — approach, some fans will need glory days to lean on.
  
• Beverly Hills, 90210: The Complete First Season (Paramount, $55), because this series is what made Fox the social network of the 1990s. Along with six more hours of special features.
  
• An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount, $30), because it has been in the headlines ever since its theatrical bow over the summer.
  
• Grey’s Anatomy Season 2 (Disney, $60), because it has last season’s 27 episodes and extended scenes from this Emmy-winning series, which captures surgeons and interns performing under stress in a Seattle hospital — and under the covers.
  
• Ali G Indahouse: The Movie (Universal, $15), because this is the first feature film starring red-hot comedi an Sacha Baron Cohen, who, on the heels of his edgy Da Ali G Show, has become even more of a pop-culture phenomenon with
  
• The Simpsons: The Complete Eighth Season (Fox, $50) or The Simpsons: The Complete Ninth Season (Dec. 19, $50), because it’s the granddaddy of the adult-themed animation craze.
  
• Reds 25th Anniversary Edition (Paramount, $20), because it earned Oscar nominations for all four acting awards (in total it won three: best director, Warren Beatty; supporting actress, Maureen Stapleton; and cinematography).

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Buying Different Type of Running Shoes

An Athletic shoe is a generic name for a shoe designed for sporting activities, and is different in style and build than a dress shoe. Originally known as sporting apparel, today they are known as casual footwear. Depending on what part of the world you live in, they can also go by the name sport shoes, running shoes, gym shoes, tennis shoes, sneakers (American English), trainers (British English), runners (Canadian English), or sandshoes (Australian English). In some urban areas in the United States, the slang for casual athletic shoes is kicks. In Hiberno-English the term is runners. In South African English the term used is takkies.

Choosing a new pair of running shoes can be a daunting task with so many options on the market. If you visit a running shoe store or pick up a magazine about running and jogging, you will find words such as pronation, supination, and neutral to describe your running style. You will find that running shoes come in a variety of types and styles that include those for motion control, support, cushioning, and racing. You will discover that the type of running shoes you need may depend on whether you do road or trail running, whether you are fast, slow or steady, and whether or not you race. Gone are the days when you would simply go into a store and find a pair of sneakers that fit. Today, choosing running shoes has become a science.

Tips & Suggestions on Running Shoes:

• If you are in the market for a new pair of running shoes, don't despair. "Pronation" simply means your ankle rolls inward as you run, while "supination" means your ankle rolls to the outside; "neutral" is right in the middle. To find out what type of foot you have, put a paper grocery bag on the floor and wet the bottom of your foot with a sponge. Take a step onto the paper bag and look to see what kind of a print you made. A wide print means you are probably a pronator while a narrow print, or one with the middle missing entirely, shows that you are more than likely a supinator.
  
• Running shoes are made to fit the three main types of running styles, but they also take into account gait, speed, weight, and pace. Sprinting shoes are built differently than the shoes of longevity that a marathoner would wear. Trail shoes are reinforced to be sturdier as a trail runner might encounter roots, rocks, or other obstacles, while street running shoes are relatively soft and pliable.
  
• Runners should always have a good pair of running shoes; do not be afraid to spend a fair amount of money on your running shoes. Go to a running shoe specialty store and ask for a pair of shoes that fits your running style. Coaches and personal trainers can help you choose running shoes as well. Pronators will need a straight shaped shoe while supinators require a shoe that is more curved. If you are a pronator with a flat arch, you will need a motion control shoe, but if you are a supinator with a high arch, you will require a specially cushioned shoe.
  
• The many choices may seem confusing at first, but in the end, you will have the best shoe for your running style, which will mean better running health for your entire body.

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Stopped old Space Station construction resumes

• For more than three years, the International Space Station that is half-built has floated above the Earth. But now construction, which has hung in limbo since NASA’s space shuttle fleet was grounded after the 2003 Columbia disaster, is scheduled to resume.

• Work on the station stopped because of the Columbia accident, which forced NASA to redesign many shuttle systems and its own safety procedures. The Columbia disintegrated while returning from a mission on Feb. 1, 2003, killing its crew of seven. The shuttle had been critically damaged during liftoff when a piece of insulating foam broke off its fuel tank and ruptured part of its heat shield.

• The project began in late 1998 with the joining of two American and Russian modules, the United States and 15 other nations have slowly put together a structure that weighs more than 400,000 pounds, with a habitable volume of almost 15,000 cubic feet. When completed, it is to weigh almost a million pounds and have a cabin volume of more than 33,000 cubic feet, larger than a typical five-bedroom house.

• NASA has allotted about 15 flights to complete the project before the shuttles are retired in 2010. The next four missions will carry other massive truss segments to extend the station’s central girder to more than 350 feet. The girder will eventually support four huge sets of solar-power arrays, batteries and heat-dispensing radiators.

• The additional truss segments, which will increase the mass of the station by 40 tons, will also include 10-foot-wide rotary joints shaped like wagon wheels that will allow the solar arrays to track the sun for optimum power as the station moves in orbit. The Atlantis is delivering the second array, joining one put on the station in 2000.

• NASA managers say shuttle flights should still be considered experimental and somewhat dangerous, but they call the risks “acceptable” for the missions left to finish the station.

• The director of the shuttle program N. Wayne Hale Jr. said, “We expect to have some foam loss from the tank on the next flight,” But a better understanding of these issues, and progress in developing ways to repair damage in flight, allow NASA to resume a regular launching schedule.

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Nuclear deal between India & U.S

India will not agree to any changes to a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation deal reached with the U.S. last year, Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh said Thursday. Singh made a detailed presentation to parliament on the deal after opposition parties accused the government of succumbing to U.S. pressures to limit India's nuclear program. India would have to strengthen nuclear safeguards, allow international inspections of its civilian facilities, and separate its civilian and military nuclear programs.

"We have made it clear that India's strategic program is outside the purview of the agreement," he said. "We will stick to the parameters of the agreement signed in Washington last year and this alone will be the acceptable basis of nuclear cooperation between India and the United States."

The United States and India made international headlines this year when they announced a proposed nuclear deal that would give India assistance with its civilian nuclear energy program if New Delhi agrees to international inspections and safeguards. Opponents of the proposed legislation say it could fatally damage the international nonproliferation regime. The deal's advocates say it encourages New Delhi to prevent nuclear proliferation and marks a new closeness in the Indo-US relationship.

Nuclear Testing Limitations
A political pledge that it has made before in other contexts. All of the other original nuclear-weapon states are not only observing unilateral moratoria, but they have also signed the CTBT, which according to customary reading of Article XVIII of the Vienna Convention on Treaties, establishes a legally-binding commitment not to take any action “contrary to the purpose or intent” of the treaty prior to ratification, the President to certify that:
India is making satisfactory progress toward a legally-binding commitment not to conduct nuclear weapon test explosions or nuclear explosions of any kind, and has not conducted a nuclear test explosion after May 1998.

India-specific or Country-neutral criteria
According to the July 18 Joint Statement and the civil-military separation plan announced by Prime Minister Singh, India has agreed to allow permanent IAEA safeguards on nuclear reactors and facilities that it designates as “civilian.” By the time the separation plan is to be implemented in 2014, as many as eight additional nuclear reactors would be safeguarded. Currently four reactors are already under facility-specific safeguards and India already agreed that two Russian-supplied light-water energy production reactors now under construction will also be safeguarded

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How to write Press Releases for Google and Yahoo news?

PRESS RELEASES have been one of the most powerful forms of advertising and marketing on the planet. Press release distribution service will get you the press and media coverage you need. No amount of paid advertising can often do as much as a two minute news segment which favors your great new product or service.

Learning how to write a press release for Yahoo News and Google News is no longer an interesting sideline for a few SEO copywriters. It is now a significant career opportunity for the vast majority of public relations copywriters.

According to Hitwise, Yahoo News and Google News are both in the top 10 news and media websites. And Yahoo News ranks ahead of MSNBC.com and CNN.com, while Google News ranks ahead of USAToday.com and NYTimes.com.

How to write Press releases for Google news
Press release for Google News is a five-step process that can be taught in a half-day public relations workshop. So, why haven't more public relations firms and departments seized this opportunity?

• The first step in learning how to write a press release for Google News is identifying a target audience and developing a segmentation strategy. This requires a re-definition of public relations that is significantly broader than media relations.

• The second step is conducting keyword research and finding your search term sweet spot. This requires learning to use a keyword suggestion tool.

• The third step is focusing on Google News, even though it is relatively new.

• The fourth step is optimizing press releases to get high rankings on Google News for as long as possible.

• The fifth and final step is tracking optimization's effects and measuring promotion's results. This requires learning to use Web analytics and other measuring tools.

How to write Press releases for Yahoo news
These are the guidelines to write your press release:

• Make it "newsworthy"
Perhaps your company has a new product, a new management team, or new web site. But, as excited as you may be, those topics are not "newsworthy" unless you can come up with a unique angle or approach. Your opening sentence should be so compelling that it will capture the attention of the media you send it to. They are anxious to find fresh stories they can run, but they will not do your creative work for you.

• Avoid cliches, hype and fluff
Do not use exclamation marks, or say things like "save money" or "superior customer service."

• Use real life examples
Tell a true example of how someone used your service and changed their life, became more healthy, started a new career, and so on.

• Tie your story to current events or social issues
Editors like to find stories that tie in to current events in the news.

• Use a standard press release format
Editors do not want to hunt for the information they need.

• Submit it to the right person
You can waste a great deal of time and effort if you do not send your completed release to the person who decides whether to pursue it or not.

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Zinedine Zidane Headbutt world cup final 2006

A flashy midfielder, Zinedine Zidane won the Golden Ball as the most valuable player in the World Cups of 1998 and 2006. Zidane's nickname is "Zizou". He played his first professional First Division game for Cannes in 1991 and quickly rose through the professional ranks.

On 9 July 2006, Zidane played his second World Cup final his final game and scored in the 7th minute from the penalty spot with a chip shot that hit the crossbar before narrowly bouncing behind the goal line. He became one of only four footballers to achieve the feat of scoring in two different World Cup finals, sharing the honour with Pele, Paul Breitner, and Vava.

If you were among the billion or so viewers watching the soccer World Cup final on Sunday (9 July 2006) chances are you were struck more by the ignominious end to Frenchman Zinedine Zidane's career rather than the game itself.

In his final game, the 2006 World Cup final against Italy, Zidane was red-carded out of the game for a bizarre headbutt to the chest of Italy's Marco Materazzi. Italy won the game and the World Cup on penalty kicks after a 1-1 draw. However, Zidane was still named the tournament's most outstanding player.

In the 110th minute of the World Cup final a, Zidane was sent off for headbutting Marco Materazzi in the chest in an off-the-ball incident after the two players had exchanged words. Since video footage suggested that Materazzi had provoked Zidane, newspapers had lip readers try to determine what Materazzi had said, coming up with a variety of obscene and racist insults. Zidane has explained the incident by saying Materazzi insulted his mother and sister.

Materazzi admitted insulting Zidane, but said that Zidane's behaviour had been very arrogant. He stressed that the insults had been trivial.

Zidane's dismissal in extra-time for a head butt into the chest of Italy defender Marco Materazzi ensured he missed a tense penalty shootout which Italy won 5-3 and killed hopes of a fairytale ending to a glittering career.

French superstar Zinedine Zidane was handed a three-match ban and fined 7,500 Swiss francs (4,700 euros) on Thursday for his infamous headbutt on Italy's Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final, FIFA said Materazzi was also handed a two-match suspension and fined 5,000 Swiss francs (3,100 euros).

France's President Jacques Chirac was characteristically philosophical on the off-the-ball clash: "I don't know what happened, why Zidane was punished. But I would like to express all the respect that I have for a man who represents at the same time all the most beautiful values of sport, the greatest human qualities one can imagine, and who has honored French sport and, simply, France".

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Google buy video site “YouTube”

Google Inc. appears to be on the verge of buying YouTube Inc. for at least $1.6 billion in a deal that would catapult the Internet search leader to a leading role in the online video revolution. This is a very good move for Google strategically as it opens to them the possibility to grow in one Internet area where they were not very big -- that is, video,"

WEB SEARCH leader Google Inc. said on Monday it agreed to acquire top video entertainment site YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in stock, the highest price yet paid for a consumer-generated media site. The first deal to value one of the new generation of user-participation Web sites at more than $1 billion combines two of the most popular Internet brands: Google, synonymous with Web search and rapid innovation, and You Tube, a Silicon Valley upstart that has spearheaded the video-sharing craze.

The acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google's expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Internet. The combined companies will focus on providing a better, more comprehensive experience for users interested in uploading, watching and sharing videos, and will offer new opportunities for professional content owners to distribute their work to reach a vast new audience.
"The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. "Our companies share similar values; we both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers."

You Tube, which grew in 19 months from a start-up in a garage to now serve up 100 million videos daily, has drawn scrutiny from major media companies for copyrighted television and music videos that users post without owner consent. While YouTube said on Monday it had signed a spate of distribution agreements with major record labels, some analysts caution Google could still be inviting lawsuits with this acquisition.

Nonetheless, in anticipation of the deal, investors pushed shares of Google up $8.50, or 2 per cent, on Nasdaq on Monday to a closing price of $429.00 — a level not seen since late April. In extended hour’s trade, Google climbed to $431.55.
“YouTube is phenomenally valuable in terms of traffic and in the Internet sector this is important just like location is important in real estate,” Oppenheimer analyst Sasa Zorovic said of combining YouTube with Google's advertising machinery. Analysts said the deal would thrust Google quickly into the emerging market for video advertising, where it has only a tiny foothold compared with Yahoo Inc. And start-ups. The all-stock deal, expected to close this quarter, was structured to make it tax-free for YouTube shareholders and cheaper for Google than paying cash, company officials said.


About YouTube
February 2005, YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips and across the Internet through websites, blogs, and e-mail. YouTube currently delivers more than 100 million video views every day with 65,000 new videos uploaded daily and it has quickly become the leading destination on the Internet for video entertainment.
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Origin of Earth

• In 1650 Archbishop Ussher used the Bible to calculate that the Earth was created in 4004BC. Later on in the mid-nineteenth century Charles Darwin believed that the Earth must be extremely old because he recognized that natural selection and evolution required vast amounts of time.

• It wasn't until the discovery of radioactivity that scientists began to put a timescale on the history of the Earth. Rocks often contain heavy radioactive elements which decay over long periods of time, the decay is unaffected by the physical and chemical conditions and different elements decay at different rates (These rates are slow and half-lifes of several hundred million years are not uncommon).

• Throughout this century the race has been on to discover the oldest rocks in the world. The oldest volcanic rock found so far has been dated at 3.75 billion years old, but this is not the whole story. Meteorites created at the same time as the Earth hit us all the time, radioactive dating shows that they are about 4.55 billion years old.

Birth of Moon

The moon came from a collision between the earth and another planet about 4.5 billion years ago, about 50 million years after earth first formed. When the earth was in the process of forming, you still had a great amount of debris still in the same orbit as the earth. The planet that ran into the earth was the largest piece of this debris, about the size of Mars.

Hot

• Primordial heat, collisions and compression during accretion, decay of short-lived radioactive elements.
• Consequences - Constant volcanism, surface temperature too high for liquid water or life as we know it, molten surface or thin, unstable basaltic crust.
• Atmosphere - early atmosphere probably completely different in composition (H2, He)

Cooling
• Primordial heat dissipated to space
• Condensation of water (rain), accumulation of surface water.
• Accumulation of new atmosphere due to volcanic out gassing
• Conditions appropriate for evolution of life

Atmosphere at the Time of Origin

The atmosphere of the Earth (and also of Venus and Mars) is generally believed to have its origin in relatively volatile compounds that were incorporated into the solids from which these planets accreted. Such compounds could include nitrides (a source of N2), water (which can be taken up by silica, for example), carbides, and hydrogen compounds of nitrogen and carbon.

Many of these compounds (and also some noble gases) can form clathrate complexes with water and some minerals which are fairly stable at low temperatures. The high temperatures developed during the later stages of accretion as well as subsequent heating produced by decay of radioactive elements presumably released these gases the surface. Even at the present time, large amounts of CO2 , water vapor, N2, HCl, SO2 and H2S are emitted from volcanos.

Origin of atmospheric oxygen

Free oxygen is never more than a trace component of most planetary atmospheres. Thermodynamically, oxygen is much happier when combined with other elements as oxides; the pressure of O2 in equilibrium with basaltic magmas is only about 10–7 atm. Photochemical decomposition of gaseous oxides in the upper atmosphere is the major source of O2 on most planets.The partial pressure of O2 in the prebiotic atmosphere is estimated to be no more than 103atm, and may have been several orders of magnitude less. The major source of atmospheric oxygen on the earth is photosynthesis carried out by green plants and certain bacteria:

H2O + CO2 ={CH2O} + O2

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide has probably always been present in the atmosphere in the relatively small absolute amounts now observed (around 54 1015 mol = 54 Pmol). The reaction of CO2 with silicate-containing rocks to form precambrian limestones suggest a possible moderating influence on its atmospheric concentration throughout geological time. CaSiO3 + CO2 =CaCO3 + SiO2

The ozone layer was formed which started to filter out harmful ultraviolet rays. This allowed the evolution of new living organisms in the shallow seas.

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Jackson made videogame for Microsoft

Microsoft's video games could get much more Hollywood excitement and drama as the company today announced that it will create Wingnut, a new game studio in cooperation with Academy award winning writer, director, and producer Peter Jackson as well as Academy Award-winning screenwriter Fran Walsh.
According to an announcement made Wednesday, Jackson and Walsh will be deeply involved in key titles to be published under various Microsoft brands. In a first stage, the parties will collaborate to develop two new "interactive entertainment series" for the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, the first of which will be a sequel to Halo and the second "will be an entirely original property targeted at bringing new audiences into the captivating world of interactive entertainment."
Microsoft Corp. said on Wednesday that it is teaming with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson to create content for its Xbox 360, in part to get more mainstream users interested in the company's video game console.
Just don't call these products "games." "I don't want to classify it as a game. I'm hoping to stretch the definition of interactive entertainment to go beyond the game," said Shane Kim, a corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft Game Studios. Kim conceded he's not sure what exactly these new "entertainments" might be.
"I feel like we haven't figured it out, to be honest," he said. Whatever they are, Kim said they could include deeper plot lines and more interactive drama, or delivering additional content over time, perhaps through the company's Xbox Live online service. "It's about making interactive entertainment a mainstream form of entertainment," Kim said.

Jackson and his Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Fran Walsh, will be directly involved in the creation of the new "Halo" title. Jackson, whose third movie in his Rings trilogy won 11 Oscars, including best director and best film, plans to work with Bungie Studios to create one product based on Microsoft's already popular Halo game, Kim said. Screenwriter Fran Walsh, Jackson's wife, also is on board. The other product will be aimed at an audience beyond the young men typically associated with video games. Kim couldn't say when either of Jackson's projects might come out.

Microsoft also said on Wednesday that it was working on another Halo game, called Halo Wars. It will be more of a strategy game, rather than the first-person shooter that has typified the series until now.
Halo Wars will be in addition to Jackson's creation and the previously announced Halo 3, due out next year. The company also announced North American and European pricing for its external DVD player, which will be available in November as an add-on to the Xbox 360.

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Bill Gate's work place

First, Gates has synchronised his three screens to function as one large desktop. He can use his mouse to drag items from one screen to the next. Gates has said of this, “Once you have that large display area, you’ll never go back. It has a direct impact on productivity.” Gates says this setup allows him to monitor new developments even while he’s working on something else. He can “bring up a link that’s related to an email and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me.” The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me.

How he works
At Fortune, Bill Gates talks about his workflow and his organization system. On top of his marketing stuff on his products, he talks about couple of key things that involves in his daily work life. Here are some key points:
1. Paperless.
2. Email is the first communication medium.
Bill Gates gets about 100 emails a day on average. But that’s because of rigorous filtering which means only e-mails that he has corresponded with are sent directly to him. An assistant provides a write-up of e-mails who are not on his permission list or from unknown individuals. E-mails are crucial to Microsoft because that is the company’s medium of internal communication, more so than telephone or anything else. Of course, Microsoft’s e-mail systems integrate voice mail and faxes. Gates uses tools like “inbox rules” and search folders to mark and group messages based on content and importance. Gates admits he is not "big on to do lists" and instead uses e-mail, desktop folders and an online calendar. That way he walks up to his desk, focusses on flagged emails, checks folders monitoring specific projects and looks at a few select blogs. He claims to be "very disciplined" about ignoring Outlook Express's notification box signaling the arrival of new e-mails.

Focus on Rigour
Discipline and focus, believes Gates, are the key to handling the problem of information overload. But he warns that the other problem is "information underload." As he once said in a Fortune article, "Being flooded with information doesn't mean we Left screen This is where Gates keeps his e-mail accounts Centre screen He keeps the specific e-mails or document he is working on here Right screen Gates keeps his internet browser here have the right information or that we're in touch with the right people."

Gates Solution
Gates observed that digitization of the global economy, evolution in the way people work and breakthroughs in software development are among the trends driving this opportunity for Microsoft, its partners and customers. Bill Gates described how Microsoft is helping customers improve business results by better bridging business processes and business practices. The convergence of business systems with personal productivity software tailored for specific employee roles will enable the people-ready business.
Share point, a programme that creates websites for collaboration on specific Projects and has plans, schedules, discussion boards on each project all put together. The other tool he swears by is desktop search. This allows him to collect all the information on a theme in one fell swoop, without waste of time.

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Advance features of Google's world

Google is the best search engine in today's world. People start saying Google rather than search; this is enough to tell the popularity of Google. These are the few more things came to the Google's family which are provided by the Google to today’s world:

Translate
Most websites are available in English, a fair number are only written in other languages. If you find you need to read one and don't want to take a crash language course, then Google can act as a translator for Italian, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. The language tools web page has two translation methods. The first translates a phrase that you type or paste in. The second translates an entire website. The results aren't perfect but it’s usually enough to get the gist of what's written. Google will allow you to translate any document from their search results by the click of a link. What might be less obvious is that they might enable you to search foreign languages in your native language. All translating would be done behind-the-scenes, so that when you search for “thus spoke”, you might as well get results which only contain “also sprach.”

Spreadsheets
If you want to invest in an office suite for just using a spreadsheet, Google has a solution. With the Google Online Spreadsheet you can create, store and share spreadsheets on the web just like using any offline spreadsheet application. You can also import any existing spreadsheet, and above all, you can access it from any corner of the world. Google's spreadsheet app is supposed to be less sophisticated than offline competitor Excel, it puts a focus on easy sharing and group-editing of documents.

Calendar
Google allows users to synchronize their Gmail contacts with a web-based calendar. It became available on April 13, 2006, and is currently in beta stages. While users are not required to have a Gmail account, they are required to have a free Google account in order to use the software. You can also create invitations, send reminders and keep track of RSVPs right inside Google Calendar. You can also create a calendar and link it to your website or blog for others to view the events or holidays.

Pages
If you want to create your online presence Google can help you. With Google pages you can create a free home page for yourself without the knowledge of any programming or HTML. Moreover a 100MB of space for your web site is good for a start-up.
Now that we've shown you how to use Google's more advanced features, you will probably be pleased to know that they can be used in conjunction with each other, thanks to the Tabs on the Google website. For example, if you were performing a search for books on the web, you can just click on the Groups tab to move the search to internet newsgroups.

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Google and eBay alliance for advertising

The two prominent Internet companies announced an advertising partnership Monday that aims to put buyers in touch with a wider variety of sellers, such as the neighborhood exterminator, math tutor or roofer.

Google Inc. will begin selling advertising on Web auction leader eBay and help buyers quickly ring an online merchant to do business.

• The arrangement announced Monday promises to introduce "clickto-call" Web site technology to a broader audience and potentially speed its adoption as a means to more quickly connect online consumers with advertisers.

• Under the arrangement, Google would provide search results whenever an eBay member typed in a search term that failed to find any matches on eBay's vast auction site.

• Although eBay lists millions of physical, shippable goods, such as antique airplanes and used cloth diapers, the company has long struggled to sign up service providers people who sell their labor or intellect, not their physical wares.

• Nikesh Arora, head of Google's European operations, said: "We believe the future of the whole internet space is going to hinge on great partnerships formed between like-minded companies."

• He said Google was keen to develop different forms of communication with its customers and to find new ways to "monetise" advertising in cyberspace.

• Whenever a potential bidder seeks a product on eBay, Google will use its search expertise to come up with relevant promotional links. To make the links more lucrative, the two companies will collaborate on so-called "click-to-call" advertising, which allows shoppers to talk to vendors at the touch of a button.

• The deal involves an undisclosed element of revenue sharing. The "click-to-call" element pools the resources of eBay's online phone service, Skype, with rival Google Talk. Low-cost internet calling is rapidly taking off. Skype says it has 100m accounts worldwide and is adding 200,000 a day.

• Alex Kazim, Skype chief executive, said: "We've had a long-standing relationship with Google and we're excited about the prospects for extending it. It's really common on net space to have companies collaborate in areas in which they overlap."

• "We have a chance to create a whole new way for buyers and sellers to connect online and to create what we hope will be a significant revenue stream for both eBay and Google," eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman said.

• Google is widely viewed as the most successful advertising-funded internet company. Its US rival Yahoo suffered a significant setback last month when a new advertising technology platform was delayed, sending its shares into freefall. Yahoo hoped its new system would more accurately match advertising links to customers' searches and queries, winning back ground in its tussle with Google.

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