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Google raised a few eyebrows when it purchased a Finnish paper mill back in 2009 -- what, the world, wondered, would the king of cloud services want with reams of tree guts? Space for a data center, of course -- and a seawater-cooled one at that. Google's Joe Kava told  GigaOm  that, when it launches in the fall, the center's temperature will be regulated by a quarter-mile of seawater tunnels inherited from the building's past tenants. One of the hardest parts of getting the system up and running has apparently been figuring out a way to clean corrosion from salt water without taking the system offline. Google's also working to limit the center's impact on the surrounding ecosystem, making sure that the water itself is cooled down before being pumped back out. Between this and those wind-powered data centers, it looks like Captain Planet's always got a cushy IT gig at Google to fall back on, should he ever fall on hard times. GigaOm

It's still too early to pass judgment on News Corp's daring venture into tablet-only newspapers, The Daily, but at least we now have an idea of how much it costs to get a project like this off the ground. Having spent $30 million developing the concept before launch, the company's latest quarterly reports indicate another $10 million loss was incurred on the early operations of The Daily. That's resulted in 800,000 total downloads of the iPad-only app, though a breakdown of how many of those were just trying out the free trial and how many have stuck around for the paid version hasn't been forthcoming. News Corp stresses that The Daily is still a work in progress, one that we've heard may also be making its way onto Android tablets, and looks very much committed to seeing its plan through to the end. So if this digital-only, subscription-paid news idea fails, it won't be for lack of trying. Electronista paidContent.org