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Cloud computing is a type of on-demand hosting services on the internet. Not only a necessity for mainstream e-commerce sites, it also increases efficiency, is scalable, and lowers expenses. The monetary savings may be misleading to consumers and businesses who do not fully understand the potential risks involved.

With a pay-as-you-go type structure, users are only charged for the amount of traffic, bandwidth, and memory used. Online businesses become more efficient by only utilizing the storage and space needed, while also being assured capacity for any usage increases. The buzz has been building for years, so cloud computing has attracted a diverse customer base, ranging from popular social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, to educational websites of Arizona State and Northwestern University.

Looking for a new emerging market? Try Pakistan! Despite a continued sense of tension with India and open hostility along the Afghan border, the country's bond market is the best in the world, according to data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM). Debt sold by Pakistan has surged 88% this year -- topping the 45 emerging markets that JPMorgan watches and the 19 that Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: BAC) follows.

And, the stock market may be next.

Money managers, according to a report by Bloomberg, believe that the Pakistani equity market could become the next global superstar. The Karachi Stock Exchange 100 Index is only trading at 9.6X earnings, making it the lowest in Asia (excluding Japan) . . . and this follows a 21% increase year-to-date.

There are a variety of reasons for the disarray in the newspaper industry. But one culprit is a funky website: craigslist, which provides online classified services.

Craig Newmark started the service back in 1995 Originally, it was a simple email list for local events in San Francisco. Since then, growth has exploded. In fact, there are about 20 billion page views per month.

What's more, according to a report from Classified Intelligence Report, the craigslist site is expected to generate more than $100 million in revenues for this year.

Under the radar: Some trends are obvious enough and visible to all investors. Others are more-subtle, but are just as potent, and these often slip "under the radar."

Case in point: Tech advances in light emitting diode lights, or LEDs, are positioning the innovative light form as a potential opportunity for a large reduction in both U.S./global energy consumption and, by extension, in carbon dioxide emissions, The New York Times reported.

With a lagging IPO market and a grinding global recession, it's been brutal for startup companies. Simply put, many VCs have been holding back.

But there is one area that remains hopeful: cleantech.

In fact, today, Hara, a new company in the space will launch. Funded with $6 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), the firm will offer a sophisticated software system that measures, audits and provides advice on how to lower environmental waste.

OpenTable, which plans to launch its IPO this week, announced that the price range on the offering has gone from $12-$14 to $16-$18. In other words, there's quite a bit of investor interest in the deal. In all, the company plans to issue three million shares (about half of which will be sold by insiders of the company).

OpenTable operates an online network that manages reservations for restaurants. Some of the functions include table management, guest recognition and email marketing.

In the world of game-changing companies, mistakes and accidents are usually a common thread. Look at MySpace. Initially, the site copied Friendster. But MySpace accidentally forgot about several security features, which allowed users to essentially pimp their profiles. Yes, it was this differentiator that helped propel the site's hyper-growth.

Well, right now the next-big-thing in the tech world is Twitter, which has recently gained the approval of Oprah.

Funny enough, the site came out of a failed venture – called Odeo – and quickly evolved from its initial purpose (that is, a location-based service or group SMS).

After a long draught, the IPO market came to life this week. Changyou.com, which is a hyper-growth online gaming company based in China, was able to price its offering at $16 per share. In all, the company raised $120 million. Changyou.com is a spinoff of Sohu.com (NASDAQ: SOHU), a top portal in China.

In May 2007, Changyou launched its hugely popular game, Tian Long Ba Bu (which became the #3 game in China). The platform has about 1.8 million active paying accounts.

I'm a recent user of Twitter. For the most part, I'm not sure about the value proposition. But in light of the site's enormous popularity, I had to take a look.

Well, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is also interested -- and is willing to throw some bucks at it. Yes, Twitter is growing up and trying to find ways to monetize its user base.

The initiative is called ExecTweets. As the name implies, this is for business-types (the kinds of people who -- I guess -- buy Microsoft software). That is, Microsoft has a site, in partnership with Federated Media, to aggregate tweets from executives. For what? I'm not sure. And how will we know that the tweeters are executives? I'm not sure of that, either.