Google Might Build Super-Green Power Plants

Google's been investing in solar, wind and geothermal companies for a while, so it's not particularly surprising that the company is thinking about going a step further and directly financing some green power plants. This could be a move that could push other companies to delve deeper into greener energy tech, so all the more power to Google. Good God, did I just make a pun out of that? [Wired]

Apple Tablet to Be "Shockingly" Cheap

On the latest episode of Diggnation, Internet and television personality Alex Albrecht remarked that he was shocked about 'how cheap the price point" of the Apple tablet would be. No word on how exactly he got his information or just how cheap it needs to be to shock him. [Apple Insider]

Computers Don't Really Save Hospitals Any Money

Harvard did a study to see if using computers saves hospitals money or increases administrative efficiency. The answer to both questions was a resounding "no," but I don't think that should be a surprise. Using computers in an environment like that requires maintenance and training, which naturally cost both money and time. What surprised me about the study is that it didn't look at what effect the use of computers had on actual patient services. Does it make a difference there? [All Things D]

Photo by tahitianlime

TweetBookz Made My Inner Bookworm Crawl Into a Hole

Alright, I confess: I like books and I'm a bit of a dorky geek which means that nearly any new combination of geek and lit tends to appeal to me. Except when it goes oh-so-very-wrong like these TweetBookz.

The idea behind TweetBookz is that you pay about $30 to have a bunch of your tweets made into a nicely bound book. Initially I thought that this could be neat, but then I looked at my own tweets. I somehow don't think I or anyone else would want a book full of messages to creepy people or days of the week.

But maybe I'm just a bit of a lazy, boring Twitter user. [TweetBookz via Wired]

Guy Wins Beard Contest With a Hairy Bird Cage

Jason was particularly excited about this old clip of a beard contest of some sort. I was just plain terrified.

Samurai Mario Battles Bowser and a Dinosaur

I'm not entirely certain what possessed someone to make this illustration of Mario attempting to battle a dinosaur and Bowser while dressed as an ancient samurai, but I like it. [Geekologie]

Ikea Makes an iPhone App

Good news for those who want to deck out their rooms with Ikea items, but need to see the entire catalog on their iPhone before shopping: There's an app for that. [Fresh Home]

I'll Tell You About The Audi E-Tron as Soon as I Stop Drooling

Ok, I don't think I can stop drooling long enough to type, so I'll keep it brief: Wowza. This is the Audi E-Tron which was shown off as a concept at prior car show. She's still got the 3,320 lb-ft of torque we were teased about, but now she's been photographed some more and she looks oh-so-very-nice. Check out the bright-pumpkin-orange car-shaped eyecandy over at Jalopnik. [Jalopnik]

You read that correctly, fellow Net denizens. Coming soon, Mr. Polar Bear and his brethren will be sharing real estate with a ring of floating, self-sustained nuclear power stations. It's all part of Russia's—and the world's—ongoing thirst for energy.

Environmentalists are understandably outraged over the impact said stations could have on an already endangered area of the globe, and if polar bears could talk, I imagine they'd be outraged too.

Said a rep from Bellona, a Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, "[The plan] is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle."

Oh, and there's this fear that Russia will simply dump the radioactive waste into the Arctic Sea anwyay, which they've done before on several occasions. To date at least 12 nuclear reactors from decommissioned Russian submarines have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid waste.

Pretty soon the ocean will be like a 24/7 aurora borealis up there. A wonderful, cancer-causing aurora borealis. [Guardian]

The Spremberg plant is tiny by most standards, pumping out just 30 megawatts while many plants can pull off 10 times that output. Even so, compressing and chilling the CO2 can be a real energy drain in and of itself, so the efficiency of the plant is seriously compromised by the green initiative.

Still it is worth tweaking the basic system for enhanced efficiency, as Vattenfall says that the system can theoretically gather up to 98% of the CO2 produced by the plant, making it nearly pollutant free.

Critics say that this is just a diversion from investing resources in truly non-polluting technologies. While I tend to lean with those critics, I am a fan of clean coal because the US uses so much coal to produce electricity for cities. Still, I'm not 100% clear on the whole pumping-greenhouse-gases-into-the-earth thing. I know it gets sealed away in places that previously contained massive amounts of natural gas, but still, isn't anyone concerned that this is just set up for massive CO2 geysers in decades or centuries to come? There, I said it—science nerds, please feel free to bludgeon me with the Stick of Enlightenment. [Technology Review; Vattenfall]

They're saying that Toshiba will be installing the first one in Japan next year, with working reactors coming to Europe and America by 2009. While we'd really like to go off-grid, something's fishy about all this. This must be a hoax. Next: personal nuclear weapons? [Next Energy News, via Dvorak Uncensored]

fit each plant with four rotors to sustain them in the air (they'd essentially look like H-shaped kites) and in the process these rotors would also generate electricity, which would be transmitted back to the ground via aluminum cables. To keep the plants from flying off, they'd be tethered to the ground. Sky WindPower claims they'd be able to generate electricity at 2 pennies per kilowatt hour (versus 3-5 cents from conventional means). The downside of course is maintaining the generators. Otherwise, prototypes are expected as early as next year. – Louis Ramirez

Flying Wind Farms [Economist via The Raw Feed]