Google recently applied for approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the right to buy and sell electricity from renewable sources, much like utility companies, according to a New York Times article.

Google has a philanthropy established through Google.org, and has invested $45 million since 2007 to research global issues, including energy efficiency and innovation. One of the new services launched by Google is “Google PowerMeter,” a free tool that measures the amount of electricity used in a household throughout the day.

Despite the philanthropic arm, Google is still a for-profit company. Should extra energy be created from this project that Google doesn’t use, it can be sold back to the power grid. “We’d be delighted if some of this stuff actually made money, obviously; it is not our goal to not make money. All else being equal, we’d like to make as much money as we can, but the principal goal is to have a big impact for good,” said Bill Weihl, Google’s “Green Energy Czar,” in an interview with the New York Times on Thursday.

“There are three areas we’re looking at: concentrated solar thermal, enhanced geothermal and high-altitude wind,” Weihl said. Concentrated solar thermal uses special mirrors rather than panels to collect sunlight, and geothermal collects steam from water thrown on heated rocks deep in the earth, closer to the magma layer. Google’s research team is even considering going into the jet stream to collect wind power.

This green initiative and desire to become a power broker hasn’t been without criticism. Critics say Google is attempting to do too many things at once, or trying to control everything off- and on-line.

I think Google is one of the few companies with the money, time, resources and commitment to revolutionize the way we collect and distribute our energy. Full steam ahead, Google, especially if the steam will keep my lights on one day.

Let’s face it. Journalism in the future will be different. The changes may be disorienting to those who are used to the old ways of doing things, but change is definitely coming. A morning routine for my father on Sunday’s was to wake up, fix himself some coffee, go outside and grab the newspaper, and read the paper front to back and share some of my mother’s stories (she was a journalist) since my sister and I had no interest in the news at the time. My mother and father would both highlight the news in the paper and answer any questions we had. In, what seemed like the next day, both my mother and father had ditched the paper and were reading the news online. That is where it is going, and it is only a matter of time before we see newspapers and magazines shutting down worldwide.

I did not realize the severity of the situation until I read an article from Techcrunch about the decline of newspapers. Duncan Riley is absolutely right when he says, “Newspapers do have a future, but as I wrote in November, we are yet to see a major consolidation of print in the United States. Declining revenues will ultimately force consolidation across print media in the United States, and many of those that fail to embrace change will be on borrowed time.”

Duncan Riley of Techcrunch says that figures show rapid decrease from 9.4% to $42 billion in 2007 compared to 2006. Regardless, print media face competition from Internet-only e-zines, which have virtually no traditional paper, printing, or distribution costs, and are better versed in new media interactivity. Because of this, they are able to serve more specialized vertical communities – a function similar to today’s special interest and trade magazines. Magazines also face the television and radio industries’ entry into the text-based medium now available through the Internet.

You can get a good sense for where journalism is headed by looking at the world of tech reporting, such as Engadget, Gizmodo, The Tech Brief :) etc… They tend to be steps ahead of the rest of the media; At least try to be anyway. Most techies have also been getting tech news from sites like Slashdot  for a while, and aggregators like Digg are used more heavily among techies than any in the rest of the news media. So there is a good chance, that today’s tech news trends are a foretaste of what’s ahead for the broader media world.

Although not too close to taking over print media, online media is very close behind. The rapid decrease of print media will heavily inpact our society and changes will be made that some of you may not like, but in a effort to “go green” and “save the world,” the changes must take place, and technology – online media – will likely follow. The offering of e-ink technology will be much more prevalent, and may take over paper. Perhaps I am think way to ahead, but it is a thought that looks more likely as time ticks away. Until then, enjoy your newspapers and magazine, and any other print media while we have it now, because you never know when we may not.

Tiinker, built by Deep Grey Labs, a start-up from Sydney Australia, is the new “intelligent news aggregator.” Essentially, it is an RSS reader that lets you vote stories as interesting or not interesting. Based on these votes, Tiinker is supposed to show you stories, via the numerous RSS feeds they consume, that are interesting to you. The site allows visitors to add their own RSS feeds as well which are added to the mix of stories presented to you.

The site is currently in private beta. In a recent blog at the Tiinker site, Oleg Sushkov posted his thoughts on some of the challenges that tiinker faces when opening to the public. One big challenge is getting the right word out, as Oleg put it. It is important for visitors to understand that tiinker is not just another RSS aggregator. Another challenge is getting new visitors to hang around long enough for tiinker to learn their preferences.

“In addition to the basic challenge of actually getting the word out, we also need to make sure that we get the right word out about what tiinker actually does. tiinker is not intended as primarily an RSS reader (although it does that just fine). It is an intelligent, personalised news aggregator. We are aiming tiinker at people who don’t necessarily know what an RSS feed is; users who just want to read news and explore beyond their local paper, but who do not want to spend time filtering out stories which do not interest them.”

One of the more well-known ones is Google News, but there are also social solutions like Newsvine that let the community decide what news items rise to the top based on what’s coming over the wire. Tiinker can be better described as a mix betweeen Google News and StumbleUpon.

Everything on the site is handled with three basic controls, a “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” button, and a way to bookmark content that goes into a separate feed that you can share with others. The service will also keep track of which stories you have marked as liking, so you can go back and read them later. In order to stop users limiting themselves to just a few types of content, there is also a “lucky” dip section, which chooses a story that is outside of your taste. There is the possibility of liking that however.

I am impressed with the idea of Tiinker and look forward to the final product. It’s definitely a handy way to get a plethora of new feeds and story suggestions and they’ll definitely have to find a way to win over social news service or feed aggregator like Feed Each Other, and the cool ideas of Streamy to get interesting news.

Until one truly wins me over, I will stick with Spotback and Newsvine. Which news aggregator site do you currently use? Which do you like best? We are curious here at TTB.

I have at last found out what the MTube is. It’s being dubbed an “IMP” which stands for Internet Media Player. The MTube officially launched last Tuesday by Taiwan’s Science and Technolgy Advisory Group. The Taiwan government plans to promote the MTube as a brand new type of design and hopes to create a whole new category of devices. This thing is so small and so fast, I have to have one. Take a look at the video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zy23Oc1904[/youtube]

I will be interested to see whether the rest of the world picks up this idea and runs with it. Just imagine what Apple or Sony can do with something like this? It’s certainly good to see a solid idea coming out of Taiwan rather than the normal places. It’s also good to see that this is a governmen-backed initiativ, so it looks as though they have a solid foundation to work from. If they can just get enough of these into the market before the big boys catch up, I think they have a chance to create and hold a new market. Good luck guys.