Better Tools 1/2
nColor Brewer (previous slides)
nIBM Open Visualization Data Explorer http://www.research.ibm.com/dx/
nMeier, Barbara, Spalter, Anne Morgan, and Karelitz, David, Interactive Color Palette Tools, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Volume 24, No. 3, (2004).http://www.cs.brown.edu/~bjm/meier_ipt.pdf
Palette Browser
Gradient Mixer
demo