Bigger than a Microsoft/Yahoo flameout (or a GTA IV hangover) here are today's highlights.

SAS Applies Business Intelligence To Environmental Performance - InformationWeek

SAS for Sustainability Management applies business intelligence capabilities to environmental performance. It includes a performance management app with metrics established by the Global Reporting Initiative, a 10-year-old group that has a framework used by 1,500 businesses to measure the economic, environmental, and social impact of their operations. It also includes SAS's activity-based management app, which tracks factors such as how much carbon emissions facilities produce and develops models that show how changes would affect costs and profit. In addition, SAS predictive analytics and risk management apps forecast trends related to sustainability, such as the possibility that government fines for environmental violations could go up in the future, raising costs.

Do We Need Reusable Paper? - InternetNews

Paper is often used for all of a few minutes and tossed out. That's a waste of more than just the paper, but the power used to create it. It takes 204,000 joules of power to create a new sheet of paper and 114,000 joules to recycle one.

So what if you didn't have to make new pages but could reuse the old ones? To reduce that waste, PARC has among its many projects a reusable paper where the printout fades away after 24 hours, allowing it to be reused.

LED lighting a green investment - The Arizona Republic

Cree has developed a recessed LED-lighting fixture that sells for about $130 and can last up to 25 years.

That LED fixture is a popular alternative to compact fluorescent lights in California, which requires high-efficiency lighting in new homes, said Gary Trott, Cree vice president of market development.

Currently, LED lights account for less than 1 percent of the ambient-lighting market but within the next three years, light-emitting diodes will reach the mass market, Trott said.

Study Recommends CAFE-like Standards for Green IT - Matter Network

It may now be a common fact that the price to store or transfer a megabyte of data is quickly approaching zero, but in many ways the cost of IT is still going up. The installed server base is expected to reach 41-43 million by 2010 and energy consumption per server is growing by 9% per year. Spending on equipment, energy, and maintenance is growing so quickly that it has the potential to reduce profits among major companies.

Green technology: hype or must-have? - Computerworld.co.nz

A vendor might be tempted to take an old product out of the closet, dust it off and claim it's the new green tool for the datacentre, Staten acknowledges. He thinks few vendors are guilty of going that far, however. Instead, he says, they develop one green product and call their entire portfolios green, even if the rest of the product line is inefficient.

IT vendors might be taking a cue from car companies that boast about selling one or two eco-friendly cars while selling millions of gas-guzzling SUVs. Dell, for example, has lots of ads talking about the greenness of their servers and PCs, Staten notes. While Dell's blade servers are very efficient, on the whole the company's "servers are not a whole lot different than other people's", he says.