Search is abooming business these days on the Internet. WSJ discusses how the big content publishers are looking to place ads relevant to the stories we are reading. "Here's how the system works. Advertisers enter bids for keywords or categories on ad networks such as Google and Overture. They agree to pay a certain amount -- usually between 10 cents and 50 cents -- for each time a reader on affiliated publishers' sites clicks on their text ad. Publishers then give control of some of the space on their pages to the ad networks, who show the ads alongside related articles. The higher the per-click bid for a keyword or category, the better the chance that ad will be seen. Publishers and the ad networks share in the revenue from clicks."

Another WSJ story is about how ads are being targeted based on weather. "Online weather sites are experimenting with ads that are triggered by the local weather. They let marketers show ads only in certain zip codes, and only when the current weather or forecast meets certain conditions. For instance, an advertiser could sell air conditioners on a hot day in Miami -- or snow tires during a blizzard in Milwaukee...Advertisers have long adjusted their campaigns to fit the weather -- like buying radio time for hot-soup ads on cold, rainy days, or television time for allergy medications during seasons with high pollen count -- but the Web allows for automatic, instantaneous tweaking of campaigns' timing as current conditions and forecasts change. They can also charge more for these targeted ads."

All this is not coming cheap. Wired writes about how the cost of paid search is going up. "As more merchants look to snap up the same keywords, search-engine experts say they also appear to be pushing up prices. Based on bidding activity at the two most popular paid services -- Overture (soon to be acquired by Yahoo) and Google's AdWords program -- the cost of delivering ads tied to certain search queries has skyrocketed in recent months."

Business Week outlines many ideas to tackle the power problems that the US is facing. The ideas are applicable to other countries also. One of them is about using distributed sources of power.

If subway systems, hospitals, factories, office buildings, and even homes had their own power sources, blackouts would be far less disrupting. And these small generators -- everything from solar panels and windmills to diesel-powered facilities and small turbines -- could feed their excess electricity into the grid, reducing the need for new power plants and transmission lines. "In my lifetime, there's going to be a paradigm shift to distributed resources," predicts Shalom Zelingher, director of research and technology development at the New York Power Authority. One reason Zelingher and most other energy experts are sanguine: So-called distributed power schemes can save money, especially when generators are attached to the grid. Companies with their own power sources can use the cheapest electricity -- theirs or the grid's -- and also sell excess power back to the system.

A growing number of U.S. businesses, universities, government agencies and others rely on their own power sources for part or all of their operations, often to help protect them from outages.

The U.S. Combined Heat and Power Association says about 8 percent of electrical capacity in the United States comes from these facilities -- called cogeneration facilities or distributed power.

Advances in technology have made it easier to produce power at factories, refineries and office parks rather than rely on massive utility-operated power plants and the large regional transmission grids that serve most customers. As opposed to backup generators that are designed to be used in emergencies, the units serve a company's ongoing power needs. They take natural gas or other fuel, run it through a turbine to produce electricity, and then use the heat produced in power generation for other commercial or industrial processes.

In most cases, the companies remain connected to the grid, continuing to purchase part of their power and occasionally selling power back to the utilities when they have excess capacity. New technology also allows the companies that use distributed power to almost instantly disconnect from the grid if a problem arises outside their sites.