Special report: It’s no surprise that the more hardware a datacenter has, the more heat that gets generated and, in turn, the higher the cooling costs. Energy costs escalate and the whole situation leaves IT confronting the datacenter power crisis. In some companies, namely Google, engineers are predicting that “energy costs could dwarf equipment costs.” One trick: run datacenters on DC (direct current) and save up to 20 percent. You can also find a power-saving checklist within the online package.Open source: An executive at investment firm BayStar Capital says that Microsoft’s senior vice president of corporate strategy and development vowed to guarantee BayStar’s part in a $50 million investment in SCO. Once that was made, however, Microsoft stopped returning the company’s phone calls. This came out in a court filing, but at least one analyst doubts its viability given the inherent risk. Podcasts: Jon Udell speaks with Ellen Ullman, author of the 1995 book Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents, about how the programmer’s asynchronous, machine-mediated, always-on lifestyle impacts individuals and society. The news beat: Microsoft revokes the MVP status of adware distributor Cyril Paciullo, the creator of Messenger Plus and Messenger Plus Live. Salesforce.com unwraps its Apex programming language and platform which an exec calls ‘a third core pillar’ of its strategy, along with hosted CRM and AppExchange. And Oracle scoops up Sunopsis, a data integration company. Technology Industry