Two by me, one by Neil Mohr that I thought was really interesting. First up, Cloud Computing – or Clown Computing?

So much for the cloud.

Can we really rely on web-based services and software? If you’re expecting us to say no, surprise!

Then a look at some of the interesting things Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and Mozilla have got cooking in their labs including:

4. Google Mars
Fancy looking for Martians or discovering whether The Watchmen really do have a base on the Red Planet? Google Mars brings the power of Google Maps to nearby planets. Sadly Street View and Local Search aren’t yet available, so if you’re trying to find a kebab shop you’re out of luck.

This piece by Neil Mohr caught my attention: 3D gaming. Is it ace, or is it arse?

At its best with Left 4 Dead, some primal instinctive part of the brain lights up as you realise you now have depth perception. Zombies flailing towards you suddenly have a natural order and a beauty as they spiral in space with a well-placed shotgun to the head. Blood spurts in awesome Jackson Pollock-esque fashion onto your virtual camera lens that views this apocalyptic world. This is the 3D at its best; it works straight out of the box complimenting the gameplay, even enhancing it.

Yay! But it’s a qualified yay:

At its worst, though, it’s a frustrating mess. A crosshair that makes you feel you’ve drunk five pints, constant ghosting from lights and effects, while struggling to make the stereo effect work at all without inducing eye-strain. Somewhat akin to magic-eye pictures, it’s an effect that you gradually get more and more used to or not at all.

Yes. Yes, it is. Guess where the link goes? That’s right! Techradar!

Overall, we like Safari 4 a lot. We’re not convinced we’ll actually use Top Sites or the visual History Search, but flashy gimmicks aside it’s a fast and pleasant way to do stuff online.

The days run away like horses over the hill…

Is Half-Life 2 the future of indie movie-making?

The potential is mind-boggling, but let’s be honest: we’re not quite there yet. The constant fast-cutting in Escape from City 17 can’t disguise the fact that some of the in-game footage doesn’t quite gel with the real footage, the Combine Citadel looks like it’s been glued into the background with Pritt Stick and we’re pretty sure that none of the $500 budget was spent on the script.

Overall, though, it works – and to our eyes it’s no worse than the CGI in the most recent Hulk movie, which cost $150 million to make and still looked like it had been thrown together on a ZX Spectrum by an angry toddler.

Six companies Microsoft should buy:

Microsoft isn’t short of cash, and it recently – and unsuccessfully – offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

The idea was to catch up with Google, but the big G isn’t the only firm doing well in areas where Microsoft isn’t. So perhaps Microsoft should widen its net.

From video and music to shopping and social networks, we think these six firms should be on Microsoft’s shopping list.

Is it Tuesday already? To celebrate the news that Woz is doing the US equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing, here’s a cheery look at some of the other daft things he’s done. Sadly there wasn’t enough time to Photoshop a pic to make him look like The Joker.

When we discovered that Steve Wozniak would be competing in Dancing With The Stars, we had two thoughts: one, could we get Steve Ballmer to go on, too? And two, is there anything Woz won’t do for a laugh?

The answer to both questions, it seems, is no. For the tech industry’s very own Joker, tomfoolery is never far away.

And here’s one about blogging for money.

Is there an alternative to ads? Not really. Citizen journalism photo agency Scoopt shut its doors last week because it couldn’t persuade papers to pay a decent whack for images – it seems that major media outlets would rather get you to send in your snaps for free – and the wages offered by firms via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk are pathetic. Write a review? Five cents. Do some digging into historical figures? Three cents. Build a space rocket, fly to Mars, discover intelligent life and bring it back in a cage? Seven cents.

Me, on Techradar: OMG! 132 versions of Windows 7!

We’re the first to mock Microsoft when the firm deserves it, but the Windows 7 line-up simply isn’t as complicated as some reports would have you believe. For the majority of us there will be two choices, just as there were with Windows XP. Home user? Windows 7 Home Premium. Home worker or small business? Windows 7 Professional.

Also on the site: Become an App Store millionaire: how three iPhone developers made it big.

“Look at it this way: most people show up to work, or school, or whatever, and they are eager to show their friends what cool new things they’ve got on their iPhone. Of the 50 apps they may have on their iPhone, they may only get a chance to show five of them to their friends. If your app is one of those five, and it can prove its worth in ten to fifteen seconds, then you’ve got yourself a successful app.” [Steve Demeter, developer of Trism]

This one was slightly delayed because I’ve spent most of the last few days in bed feeling sorry for myself. Better late than never, though.

It came from nowhere and spread like a virus. Suddenly everybody we knew was on it – telling us what they’d been up to, uploading photos, sending flirtatious messages and logging on as if the site were crack and they were addicts.

In no time at all it had millions of users of all ages, and it was regularly name-checked in scandalous newspaper articles. People were using it to arrange affairs, or to waste time at work, or to post things they’d later regret.

And then we all dumped Friends Reunited for Facebook.