I don't have details beyond an announcement that an announcement will happen at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

It says Intel and Yahoo will "announce a joint research initiative tomorrow morning."

Instead of Microsoft, Yahoo's dancing with the Redmond's companies old flames.

It's probably a smart move for Yahoo to hook up with strong research companies that haven't had as much attrition lately.

What could the subject be? Web services for the next generation of mobile computing devices, perhaps?

UPDATE: They announced "the creation of a global, multi-data center, open source test bed for the advancement of cloud computing research and education. The goal of the initiative is to promote open collaboration among industry, academia and governments by removing the financial and logistical barriers to research in data-intensive, Internet-scale computing."

Other partners include the University of Illinois, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

Sounds pretty similar to the Google-IBM project hatched at the UW.

Nice timing by Yahoo - just as Microsoft hosts a bunch of computer science professors to talk about its projects in academia, including new tools released yesterday.

Time for a Live Center of Mesh Computing Excellence somewhere?

The fate of the daily print media is the first topic to be covered in a new series of free, public salon discussions in Seattle.

The discussion series, called The Pitch, is being organized by Jason Preston, editor of the Eat Sleep Publish blog. Its debut session is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 18 at The McLeod Residence bar and gallery in Belltown.

"I think that there is a lot of demand for discussion about publishing right now,'' Preston said in the announcement. "It's clearly an industry in flux, and there's a lot of concern about how, or even if, it's going to come out at the other end of this tunnel."

More details are available at his blog.

The Wenatchee World reported that VMware is leasing most of Sabey's new datacenter complex near the airport.

That adds to the expanding Washington footprint for Palo Alto-based VMware and its parent company, EMC. They also staked out territory in Seattle with the February acquisition of Pi , a move that put Pi founder and ex-Microsoft bigshot Paul Maritz on track to become VMware's chief executive earlier this month.

VMware told the World that it's going to use the computing capacity for reseach and development.

T-Mobile is the other major tenant in the 189,000-square-foot complex opening next year. Here's an earlier piece on Microsoft staking its hydropower claim down the river in Quincy.

Data Center Knowledge has more details on Sabey's Intergate.Columbia project.

Today's column on Microsoft's growth and investments touches on differences between the Northwest and Northeast perspectives on the company's direction.

Investors may be frosty, but they can at least be happy that Steve Ballmer's being candid about his company's health, unlike the tortured messaging from that other Steve.

From the column on Microsoft's spending:

While everyone's cutting back, Microsoft keeps the spigot open, especially in its fight with Google over the rapidly evolving world of ad-supported online software and services.

A footnote: I mentioned in passing that enthusiasm for the potential of online ad businesses may cool with the economy. For more on that subject, check out this AdAge story.