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.

Microsoft technology chief Nathan Myhrvold believes he has found a cure for Global Warming, and it will only cost $250 million and won’t disrupt the carbon-emitting world as we know it.

Myhrvold proposes we combat climate change by pumping liquid sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere through nozzles in a hose lifted more than 15 miles into the atmosphere with helium-filled balloons. This sulfur cloud will dim the sun in critical areas of the world by just enough to reduce or reverse the effects of global warming. He calls this cloud a “Stratoshield.”

Since sulfur occurs naturally in the environment, he says it will not disrupt our climate in a negative fashion, and will lower temperatures as desired in areas that need to be cooled.

Do you think this could work?

Source: http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/10/video_nathan_myhrvold_explains_how_to_save_the_world.html

For instance, do you need to look up some information for a school term paper? Just use a search engine such as Google. Do you want to buy a Wii game and have it shipped to your house? You can easily find a Wii game online and possibly even free shipping to your house. Maybe you want a unique necklace made by an artist. Google in the type of jewelry you are looking for and click away on links. All of this simplicity may end by the year 2012.
By 2012, you will not even stumble across that beloved piece of unique jewelry from the small website. Right at this moment, large Internet companies are in discussion of changing the way we all use the Internet.

“I Power” activists use the analogy, “Think of how your TV works.” You can choose the basic package or you can pay more and get Showtime and/or other movie channels.

This is exactly how the future Internet would work. For a certain price you will get the large corporations such as Google, eBay, etc. websites. Although if you want to have access to smaller websites that will cost you more. The mainstream people will only pay for the large and popular companies which will sadly stop small websites. Small businesses and people trying to earn a little extra income will fail. In this economy, people need this extra money for daily living needs.

We cannot let the “bully corporations” take over the small websites. Guess what else the “bully corporations” want? Higher speed. Higher speed means you will find the links to their sites first. As computer users we want freedom of choice and not broadband companies making the choice for us.

Computer users need to write, phone or e-mail your congressmen to pass a bill to keep network neutrality. (Skip signing an e-mail chain letter.) Keep your Internet rights for better technology tomorrow.

If you take a few moments to think about internet technology, you will realize that technological advances have come a very long way. It is amazing. Where has technology taken us? Many places.

The fact that technological advances have tripled within the last 40 years compared to the 40 years before is astounding. While some of these advances may have made distractions at work (I’m guilty) a little more prevalent, it has also opened up the workplace to exciting new ways to conduct business and think about new ways to reach the consumer.

Of course, one of the major advances in the workplace was the everyday usage of the Internet. Although the Internet has been around for decades, it only became a workplace necessity in the 1990s. This is when companies realized that they could much more quickly-and cheaply-reach their target audience than through other traditional media sources.

Even more amazing, technology continues to move outside the traditional office or home environment into more powerful and full-featured mobile computing devices. BlackBerries, iPhones and Windows Mobile devices are showing a trend toward bringing the experiences we are familiar with on a desktop computer and putting them in the palm of our hands. With better devices and technology, other things have to keep up as well. The biggest breakthrough will be in increasing the speed of mobile access to the Internet. In the future, the all-encompassing network of wireless broadband Internet access will rival what we experience today in our wired offices and homes, which will allow users for a more sophisticated browsing experience.

I think in the next 5 years or so, the internet will be looked at as commonplace. Everyone will be connected to everyone else at all times. Perhaps if I take a little bit to think about the future, I  can probably guess that watching TV on the internet will be almost as common enough to not require a local cable service. Most of the shows I watch are broadcast online, sometimes better looking than watching it on cable television and I think more and more people will realize this and it’ll be quite popular. That would mean better innovations and better services on Cable companies’ parts.

It is a never-ending story of internet and the technology behind it, and I am anxious to see the best of it. However, I am an optimist. There are those that are not so anxious and for good reason. We all know that with better technology going into internet and other things, that problems arise and individuals find loopholes, and hackers have that better technology to do “bigger and better things.” There is a not-so-pretty  side of things unfortunately, but we will coupe, and time will tell.

To read a good book about this topic, I recommend  The Future of Internet and How to Stop It  by Jonathan Zittrain and it talks about a lot of interesting topics and ideas. Check it out at your local library or buy it online!

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.