Do you remember the dot-com IPOs? Just the term dot-com captured the imagination of investors. Prices of some dot-com IPOs doubled in a matter of hours.

With the current financial crisis, the market for IPOs has slowed down to a trickle. But we still have investing ideas that capture our imagination. Just mention the word term 'cloud' these days, and you are off and running.

Such is the case with cloud computing ServiceSource (SREV), reported in Investors.com The issue was for 1.9 million shares, to be priced at $10 per share.

Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ), which just had a very good first quarter, is set to continue expanding its consulting gigs with a new service called "Cloud Design Services." Sounding like something from a private kindergarten class, the new service has a heavy statement: that more computing is shifting into the internet and off the local server.

HP's new offering here will be to design private "clouds" companies can use to connect users and the information they seek using intelligent design unique to the needs of each business it consults with. This is something new -- and a step above "off the shelf" offerings by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) -- and it puts HP in an enviable spot: designing private "internet clouds" for businesses from the ground up.

Amazon, Inc. (AMZN) is in the clouds. So are Google, Inc. (GOOG), EMC (EMC) and Cisco (CSCO). Now, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) is joining them, having announced on Tuesday its new Windows Azure cloud computing system. The new product will be released on January 1, 2010 -- a new solution for a new year.

Azure will deliver an online platform for the software development set to build their own mousetraps and provide plenty of storage space for users. Testing began a year ago, and full live version will be celebrated next year. For the first month, Azure will be free. The charges start in February.

I come from a long line of farmers and ranchers, and I thought I'd heard of just about every way to inspire rain: Let's see, we have our praying, our rain dancing, and the always-useful "if I water the garden this evening it's sure to rain tonight." But in China, cloud seeding -- the practice of literally creating clouds, with or without rain -- is a booming business. And in the strange world-that-is-China, it's the government who's selling.

The odd thing is who the buyers are. When the "Office of Artificial Weather Inducement" was created, it was meant as a public service -- to wash away pollution, for example or (even stranger) to create clouds in the day or days before an event (it's planned for the 2008 Summer Olympics) to increase the likelihood the event itself will be clean, bright and sunny.

But now private individuals and businesses can buy clouds. Want a beautiful day for your wedding? It'll cost you somewhere between US$700 and $3,500.

As for the farmers? They don't have nearly enough money to buy clouds for their own purposes, and are left as the unintended victims of cloud seeding. If the rain falls mainly on Beijing -- there won't be any left for the rice.

And that's just not cool.