Donna sent me a link to her TEDx Talk. Here’s a little bit about her from the introduction:

“Donna Morton, First Power, Serial Social Entrepreneur; CEO, co-founder of First Power, with a mission to put clean energy, jobs and equity in the hands of first nations and native communities globally. Recently, Donna was elected an Unreasonable Institute fellow for building one of the worlds most “unreasonable” start ups. First Power is profitable and highly impactful. She is also an Ashoka fellow for her work with the Centre for Integral Economics (CIE), both BC based. CIE promotes market-based solutions to social and environmental sustainability and put tax shifting and carbon taxes on the map across Canada.”

I love the whole idea of the Unreasonable Institute. I mean, where has being reasonable ever gotten us? Being reasonable equates to stifling our misgivings about business as usual, putting up and shutting up. And, as Donna Morton explains in her TEDx talk, that’s only led us to ecological and cultural crisis — a world “on fire.”

Watch Donna Morton’s TEDx talk.

Follow me on Twitter @tao_of_grammar

In 2007, the issue was the environment. In 2008, the theme is poverty.

By coordinating the efforts of many bloggers (more than 10,000 different sites, as of this morning), the organizers hope to galvanize improvement in the lots of the world’s poor. As measured by the World Bank, substantial improvements have been made since the 1980s.

Even so, one quarter of the world continues to subsist on less than $1.25/day.

Here’s what you can do to help:

• Participate in the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC). Just head over to laptopgiving.org.
• Tune in to BlogTalkRadio’s 12-hour Blog Action Day talkathon to discover how dozens of prominent bloggers and technologists will be helping in the effort.
• Support microlending efforts at Kiva.org. Learn more about microcredit, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in this Business Week article, “Can Technology Eliminate Poverty?
• Read WebTeacher’s post describing a social business to find out how this form of concerned commerce works.
• Donate to or participate in the development of the technologies described at PracticalAction.org. These include micro-hydro plants, small-scale wind generators, affordable solar lanterns and biogas plants.
• Learn more in online poverty resources listed on BlogActionDay.org.

Spread the word!

Traditionally, I’d use the “Print Preview” function that’s available in MSWord and many other applications.  Or, I’d scroll around in Acrobat Reader and figure out which pages to exclude (when printing).  Now, there’s something even neater.  It’s called Green Print and a neat demo can be found here:

http://www.printgreener.com/tutorial.html

Basically, “GreenPrint” becomes your print device (in Windows) and provides you with a “print preview” function (called GreenPrint Preview) that’s got some neat features.  First, it identifies potential “waste areas” for you and highlights them in red.

You can remove selected pages from the print job or remove all text or images from a page.  If you’d like to be truly green and not send the modified document to the printer at all, GreenPrint allows you to save the document as a PDF file.

Another neat thing is the GreenPrint Report, which tabulates the number of pages saved, along with the associated cost savings.  So, use of this latest discovery means that you’re not just being green, you’re saving green too.

Around this time year, I laid out the top 20 IT buzzwords of 2006. To be fair, calling some of these technologies “buzzwords” now looks like a bit of a stretch, in terms of the strict definition for buzzword. Virtualization is everywhere now, in the network, server, desktop PC, storage hardware and data center. Web 2.0 may have been massively overhyped, but blogs, RSS, Ajax, wikis, podcasting and social bookmarking have all made an impact this year too, in a wave of adoption that many have now settled down to term “Enterprise 2.0.”

“2.0″ itself could be the word of the year, were it not for the discussions of Web 3.0 that led to some buzz fatigue and gentle reminders of the Semantic Web. (See this list of semantic apps for some insight into how this space is evolving).

SaaS applications from industry giants continue to be important for CRM. And at the end of every year, IT admins and CFOs alike can’t help but think of SOX compliance. Mash-ups, VoIP, BPM, 3G SOA, XML and data mining all continued to be relevant too, with nary a buzzword to be seen.

Anyone who creates, markets or sells content or services online know the value and importance of search engine optimization (SEO) by now as well.

While they didn’t make the number one spot (you’ll have to wait for that one) there’s no question that IT became greener, as tracked by the surge in spending, research — and hype. Green data centers , green computing, LEED certification, and, unfortunately, greenwashing all make the trend list.

Dealing with Vista is also right at the top of any trend list. Microsoft’s new OS has met with slow adoption and a slew of backwards compatibility headaches, and, as SearchWinIT’s Christina Torode reports, “Few Windows shops had plans for Windows Vista migrations in 2007, and it appears that there may also be little interest well into next year. Of more than 800 responses from IT managers to an online survey conducted by SearchWinIT.com, 37% said they had no plans whatsoever in place to install Vista, while 8% said they would begin adding the new desktop OS in the first quarter of 2008, and 9% expect to begin the upgrade in Q2 2008.”

So what else is new? What else mattered? If I just pulled from the words on WhatIs.com that received the most attention from you, our audience, you’d think it was dialectric materials, FUBAR , chaos theory, IEEE, heuristics, nanometers and compilers — but there’s more to the year that that!

I won’t aggregate every 2007 list here (after all, Fimoculous.com has, yet again, done a great job of pulling together 2007 lists) but following are some of the best that cover IT. You’ll find great new Websites, tools and services — exactly what we promise to provide you in this space from week to week.

Enjoy the lists — and, of course, don’t forget to subscribe to to our newsfeed for the best enterprise IT news or subscribe to our tipsfeed for the best enterprise IT tools and expert advice to help you work better and faster.

Jason Hiner takes aim at hardware and software in The 10 most important business technology products of 2007, noting the i-Mate, Sprint Xohm, Salesforce.com, Vista/Leopard, LinkedIn, Zoho Office, Cisco Telepresence, Microsoft Office 2007, OQO and the Apple iPhone.Personally, I agree with the commenters that the XO of the OLPC project should be in the conversation, though perhaps not on this list, as Jason says. I’d add OpenOffice, personally.

PCWorld misses that one too — though not many others — in this immense roundup of the Top 100 Products of 2007.

This list is a grab bag of hardware, software, Web sites and services. Techies will find plenty to quibble with — can you really compare the Intel Core 2 Duo with Pandora.com, Guitar Hero 2 and Netflix without segmenting them out — but if you’re looking for a good list of what mattered to techies and netizens alike to discover the best of the best, you could do much worse.

PCWorld also featured a terrific list of the top 100 undiscovered Web sites in August, if you missed it, along with their top 100 classic Web sites.

Some of my favorites (and now bookmarks) include Wink, Footnote, Wikisky, DZone, Programmable Web, VideoJug and Zoho and Meebo. Happy surfing!Time Magazine, in much the same vein, offers up their 50 Best Websites of 2007.

My favorites here have to be CellSwapper.com, Last.fm, Newsvine.com, Tumblr, Twitter, GrandCentral and, for some of the best laughs of the year, the outrageous FunnyOrDie.com.

If you didn’t see Will Ferrell’s “The Landlord,” you missed out. StumbleUpon is, for my money, the breakout Web site of the year, though YouTube and Facebook fans may disagree.

(Stumble this blog and find out what I mean).

I liked Mozy.com for online backup, too.

It isn’t quite a 2007 roundup but Esquire’s six ideas that will change the world offered such intriguing suggestions that I couldn’t help but mention them:

• a low energy method for getting rust nanoparticles to bind to arsenic for water purification in the developing world
• Internet “hacktivists” who use Psiphon to provide uncensored Net access to netizens stranded in regimes hostile to the free flow of information and ideas
• flexible circuits embedded in silicone skin that can be used for prostheses and wearable computers
• self-modeling robots who use the principles of natural selection found in evolutionary theory to arrive at the optimal model for a structure or mechanism
• CO2 sequestering in the deepest water of the oceans to force it to become a liquid heavier than water
• biodegradable plastic produced in an environmentally friendly way

For more in that vein, make sure to consult the pages of MIT’s Technology Review, where they list the following exciting emerging technologies:

• optical antennas and meta­materials
• peer-to-peer video,
• personalized medical monitors
• compressive sensing
• nanohealing and quantum-dot solar power
• single-cell analysis
• mobile augmented reality

On the other side of the coin, eWeek’s Brian Moore illustrated a list of technologies and services that flopped, floundered or aren’t quite ready for prime time in 2007′s Biggest Emerging Technology Disappointments. You’ll find virtual worlds, in the form of Second Life, ultramobile micro-PCs, home-based VoIP, mobile security for smartphones, IPv6, ebook reader (Hello, Kindle!), WiMax, BlueRay/HD DVD and MuniWiFi.

It’s hard to argue with the selections, though I do think that Kindle’s eInk technology offers the closest thing to a pleasant electronic reading experience yet.

Wired is calling for nominees for its 10th anniversary vaporware awards, too, if you want to get in on voting for what didn’t materialize this year.

Personally, and I know I’m burying the lede here, 2007 was the year that the network took a huge step towards being the computer, a trend acknowledged by Amazon, IBM and Microsoft in one form or another. (And yes, I’m talking about our word of the year again here.) Sun talked about that phenomenon ten years ago, though it missed an opportunity by not open sourcing Java. This model of Internet-based supercomputing, where vast stores of information and processing resources can be tapped into remotely by a laptop, PC, smartphone or other connected device is still building momentum..

2007 saw the introduction of more devices than ever before, including the gPC, iPhone and XO, that all move the user into this browser-based, Web application world, enabled and enobled by Ajax. Between open source operating systems, browsers, office productivity applications and inexpensive hardware, users and organizations can do more and create more than ever before, albeit in increasingly insecure environments.

We may take a stab at some predictions for the year ahead some time soon, once we finish digesting the year that was. Feel free to let me know what YOU think the most important trends and technologies for 2008 will be through email or in the comments.

According to the organizers over at blogactionday.com, Blog Action Day is intended to try to elevate a singular issue into a higher place in the world’s consciousness. This year, it’s the environment. All you have to do to participate is to blog about whatever environmental issue you are the most passionate about, contribute the day’s advertising earning to a favorite environmental charity and encourage others to do the same.

Simple and, perhaps, effective. While you may not earn a Nobel for your efforts, you just might help the world become a tad greener today. We’ve blogged here before about ways to e-cycle, a new way to think green (carbon footprints) and even podcasted about greenwashing.

Here’s one more hot (or cold) concept to add to the list for the server geeks out there: green data centers. My colleague over at SearchDataCenter.com, the intrepid Matt Stansberry, has been hard at work writing “The Green Data Center: Energy Efficient Computing in the 21st Century.”

Learn more about the forces driving IT energy consumption, why you should care and how you can make a business case to do something about it. It’s well-written, it’s downloadable and, best of all, it’s free.

Go read it.  For that matter, go read Matt’s post today posted today about how green computing is driving both better collaboration and faster product advancement.

In the meantime… it’s time to start practicing green computing!

Don’t forget to turn off your PC and unplug your chargers before you go home tonight.

Consider switching to a laptop and telecommuting more while flying less.

Ride your bicycle wherever possible and look into the slow food movement.

Adjust your PC’s hibernation settings to use the least amount of energy.

Consolidate some servers through virtualization.

Use LCDs, not CRTs.

And don’t forget to e-cycle!

Go green!

Actual size: less than 1 cubic centimeter

Although the generator is not the first of its kind, it’s said to be 10 times more powerful than any previous implementation. The technology, which has an industrial background, is being adapted for use with pacemakers. In this application, the beat of a person’s heart could power their pacemaker, which would mean that they would no longer require surgery to replace the batteries.

Here’s Beeby’s explanation (quoted in IndiaTimes Infotech):
“There is a big drive towards using wireless devices, but one of the challenges in supplying power to these devices is that batteries have a finite supply that needs to be replaced. We have a spin-out company that is now looking at powering pacemakers from the movement of the heart.

“As the power consumption of electronic devices continues to fall, the opportunity to use these devices to power them becomes more apparent. The potential is there for devices like mobile phones and MP3 players being at least augmented by vibration generators. There is quite a lot of energy available on a human such as the impact of a heel on the floor which could also be used.”

When you think about it, there’s no end of vibrational energy being generated all day every day. The VIBES team and other researchers are also exploring the potential of vibrations from roads and bridges. ~ Ivy Wigmore

Of course, it’s not easy being green. Just watch Kermit.
Just as there are complex tradeoffs in choosing what you eat (an Omnivore’s Dilemma, in fact), managing to make the “right” choice in terms of how you travel, how you do business and simply how you live is a test of both ecological ethics and cold, hard business savvy.

IBM, for instance, recently launched Project Big Green, diverting more than $1 billion dollars annually to create more energy efficient data centers.

And, according to Bridget Botelho, HP is also making a push for lower data center power consumption and green computing.

Even Google and Yahoo! are receiving fresh scrutiny, as TechCrunch recently compared just how green the two Internet giants are these days.

Fortunately, thanks to an environmental movement that’s still going strong, decades after Earth Day and fueled by an energy crunch that’s unlikely to abate any time soon, there are companies, services and individuals working hard to make being green a bit easier and sustainable. Ivy blogged about e-waste, e-cycling and environmental responsibility in the enterprise recently as well, so it’s safe to say that our team is united in believing this to be a significant issue of the moment.

We’re not alone in that assessment. Carbon neutrality, whether purchased or achieved through internal changes to processes, materials or technologies, is increasingly an important benchmark for organizations and individuals alike. Yahoo, in fact, has pledged to become carbon neutral by the end of 2007.

TechCrunch also covered GigaOm’s launch of Earth2Tech, written by Katie Fehrenbacher and Adena DeMonte, a blog that will track news, events and technologies in the green computing world. Yahoo is also urging people to become more environmentally friendly using two other sites, Be a Better Planet and Yahoo Green.

ZeroFootPrint.net is at the leading edge in terms of personalizing these choices. Based in Canada, the nonprofit was founded by entrepreneur Ron Dembo, fresh off the sale of risk-management software firm Algorithmics. ZeroFootPrint recommends green products and services for individuals, organizations and cities to help reduce their environmental footprints. I particularly like the handy calculators that allow users to determine how their food, building, consumer consumption and travel choices have larger consequences.

Over the next month, I’ll be researching a podcast on green computing, to be released in conjunction with a new ebook from the editors of SearchDataCenter.com, a leader in covering the explosion of energy efficiency and green practices on the enterprise beat. If any readers know of other great sites, organizations or services that are shaping, leading, innovating or writing about green computing (TerraPass, NativeEnergy, UC Boulder, and WorldChanging.com all spring to mind), please let me know.

And, of course, if you’ve made your own changes to your data center or home office, transportation choices or energy consumption habits, I’d love to hear about that too.

In the meantime, I’ll be walking home from work today and biking tomorrow, making my own small concession and contribution, along with getting some much needed time in the sun. It’s a shame my laptop doesn’t have a solar charger!

[Photo credit: Nigel's EcoBlog]