Computer graphics usually comes with a tradeoff: Users get to see extremely realistic images, or pictures that can be viewed interactively, but not both. Nvidia (NVDA) believes those days are ending.

The Silicon Valley chip company on Tuesday announced plans to offer a combination of hardware and software that can generate three-dimensional images that are almost indistinguishable from photographs–and do so in a matter of seconds, not the hours that such chores typically require.

Most importantly, Nvidia says, the images are rendered on servers and electronically delivered to a Web browser on any garden-variety PC. Ordinarily, the most realistic images are reserved for machines equipped with high-end graphics cards–of the sort powered by Nvidia chips–and specialized software. In other words, the technology will run “in the cloud,” as Silicon Valley marketeers like to say, rather than on a desktop or laptop machine.

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The word on the table that morning was “cloud computing.”

To translate the English term for computing resources that can be accessed on demand on the Internet, a group of French experts had spent 18 months coming up with “informatique en nuage,” which literally means “computing in cloud.”

France’s General Commission of Terminology and Neology–a 17-member group of professors, linguists, scientists and a former ambassador–was gathered in a building overlooking the Louvre to approve the term.

“What? This means nothing to me. I put a ‘cloud’ of milk in my tea!” exclaimed Jean Saint-Geours, a French writer and member of the Terminology Commission.

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International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) will try to sell a new package of low-priced computer desktop applications to companies and governments in Africa, challenging Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and other rivals in the region.

IBM, which has been pushing into developing markets like Africa and Asia as mature markets slow, said the package–which includes basic programs like word processing and email–would be made available to customers via remote “cloud computing” facilities, meaning users could access the programs from the Web. It would cost $10 per month per user, and can run on so-called netbook computers, or low-cost PCs priced around $300.

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The Federal Trade Commission is planning three public discussions, starting in December, devoted to technology and consumer privacy.

According to the FTC, the roundtables will address topics such as social networking, cloud computing, online advertising and mobile marketing, the goal being “to determine how best to protect consumer privacy while supporting beneficial uses of the information and technological innovation.”

Behavioral advertising, in particular, has come under fire by privacy groups. Earlier this month, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumers Union and other related organizations called for stronger rules limiting what kinds of personal information are collected by marketers and how long they can hold on them.

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On Tuesday, Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, unveiled Apps.Gov, a Web site where federal agencies will able to buy so-called cloud computing applications and services that have been approved by the government to replace more costly and cumbersome computing services at their own locations.

The push to promote cloud computing is part of the Obama administration’s effort to modernize the government’s information technology systems and to help reduce the $75 billion annual budget for federal I.T. in the process.

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The tech press is full of people who want to tell you how completely awesome life is going to be when everything moves to “the cloud”–that is, when all your important storage, processing and other needs are handled by vast, professionally managed data-centres.

Here’s something you won’t see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free without having to give up the money or privacy that cloud companies hope to leverage into fortunes.

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I guess no one has a clue what the increasingly fashionable term “cloud computing” means. At least, that’s the message we’re meant to take away from a new video from Cisco (CSCO), where many people are asked what cloud computing is, and most of the on-camera responses are confused, way out there, or both.

Here’s my favorite description: “Cloud computing is where God allowed all the clouds to be connected together by the angels.”

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Google’s (GOOG) Eric Schmidt “resigned” from Apple’s (AAPL) board because Chrome and Android were encroaching on Apple’s core business, or so Steve Jobs says. But what if the opposite were true? What if Apple is encroaching on Google’s core business? Later this month, Apple is expected to break ground on a massive new data center in Maiden, North Carolina.

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Google (GOOG) spent $950,000 lobbying lawmakers, regulators and the White House on issues ranging from cloud computing to copyright in the second quarter, according to public lobbying disclosures.

The sum tops the $880,000 it spent in the first quarter and represents a 30 percent increase from the second quarter of 2008, when it spent $730,000.

So what’s Google worried about? Most issues are pretty predictable, like potential regulation related to online advertising, expanding internet access and increasing the adoption of cloud-computing technologies. (It talked to the Department of Defense about the latter).

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Intel (INTC) shares this afternoon are getting a lift from an upgrade by JMP Securities analyst Alex Gauna from “Market Perform” to “Market Outperform,” with a $24 price target.

Following on a much-stronger-than-expected Q2 report last week, Intel, Gauna says, should continue to gain from better-than-expected results of its customers’ sales of notebook computers and server computers. Servers are benefitting form a shift to “cloud computing,” where more data processing is done via networks on a central computer, while notebooks may get a lift from Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 7, when it comes out on October 22.

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Whilst I have often grouped Cloud Computing with the consumerization of IT (and the iPhone as it’s most visible example) together in concert in my disruptive innovation presentations, I never really thought of them as metaphors for one another. When you think of it, it’s really a perfect visual.

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A trade organization whose members include IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT) and a laundry list of other tech companies announced this week that it has formed a group to create standards for a way of accessing information over the Internet known as “cloud computing.” But the new effort is just as noteworthy for who isn’t included: Google (GOOG), Amazon.com (AMZN), Salesforce.com (CRM) and other Internet companies.

The Open Cloud Standards Incubator is part of an organization called Distributed Management Task Force.

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“The cloud” has come to represent the bright future of computing, a world where processing and storage become as ubiquitous, cheap and accessible as electricity. But for big business, one researcher argues that “cloud” metaphor may be economically apt: The closer you look at the much-hyped technology’s price advantages, the fuzzier they seem.

At a conference organized by the Uptime Institute, a consulting firm focused on data center technologies, McKinsey & Co. analyst William Forrest on Wednesday plans to present a report aimed at debunking cloud computing’s appeal for large businesses.

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Jokes dreamed up by tech companies for April Fool’s Day may not be spectacularly funny. But one can’t help but notice the level of effort put in, which sometimes seems to rival the intensity of their product-development efforts.

Qualcomm (QCOM), for example, has a very slick video on YouTube that initially seems to be a typical piece of corporate B-roll hyping the latest development out of their labs. Then it turns out they are discussing putting cellular base stations on pigeons to form a flying wireless network, which prompts the need to develop a beast called the wolf-pigeon to defend the network, which inspires the creation of a shark-falcon to control the wolf-pigeons, and so on.

Amazon.com (AMZN), reacting to the gaseous conversations about a trend known as cloud computing, contends in a Web posting that it has a new high-level offering in the field–on a blimp. It’s called “the Floating Amazon Cloud Environment, or FACE for short. Using the latest in airship technology, we’ve created a cloud that can come to you,” the company writes.

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