AT&T has announced a cloud-computing service — hosted networking and storage, akin to Amazon.com's S3, Google's App Engine, and other Web services. Expect AT&T's version to offer higher service levels at a higher price. Called Synaptic, the service will be run from five supersized Internet data centers in New Jersey, Maryland, San Diego, Singapore and Amsterdam. The company has set up a high-profile demo: Teamusa.org, the U.S. Olympic Committee's site, is running on Synaptic.

Google Docs, one of the permanent-beta applications that Google offers as a free, lightweight alternative to Microsoft Office, went down for a brief spell just before 9 a.m. While it's back up now, as a reader pointed out, it's "Not very convenient when you have important files you need for a meeting." Welcome to the future of cloud computing, where instead of a blue screen of death, you get a server error message.

As a part of its deckchair reshuffling, Yahoo created a new Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group, led by newish CTO Ari Balogh. For now the group will focus on internal projects, but Balogh told News.com it could eventually offer cloud computing services for startups to compete with Amazon and Google. We recommend Yahoo do this, if only because unlike everyone else at Yahoo, its sounds as though Balogh might understand product marketing. For example, Balogh actually told News.com why Yahoo's service — which runs Hadoop and benefits from ""loosening ACID requirements" — is newer and therefore better than Google's. But Balogh didn't use the phrase "starting point" even once, so we're not optimistic about his tenure under CEO-in-waiting-but-not-very-patiently Sue Decker. (Photo by Yodel Anecdotal)