It seems that the ash cloud, which is causing havoc for people hoping to get in/out of the UK, might have an unseen positive benefit for startup entrepreneurs in the capital this weekend, with a partner from First Round Capital meeting companies in London tomorrow.

Chris Fralic will be taking meetings with entrepreneurs, and you'll also be able to mingle with other like-minded individuals (something which is a sadly rare occurrence on this fine land).

This kind of "Office Hours" event (according to TechCrunch UK), where you drop in and speak to a VC firm, was begun by First Round Capital several years back.

If you can make it to the event at the White Bear Yard (sadly we can't for *cough*), then it's a fantastic opportunity to get some US VC love in the big smoke.

[First Round Capital]

People have been wondering for a while how Google would enable printing from its upcoming cloud-based operating system; Chrome OS. Well, now the company has loosed detailed on how they're going to handle it, with a new system dubbed; "Cloud Print".

It essentially pushes the print job into the cloud, only to be dragged back down again to network-accessible printers to get the physical copy. It's a bit of a hacky approach we'll admit, but it does sidestep the thorny "drivers" issue quite well.

The code is being made open-source under the Chromium and Chromium OS project, so developers can get going on integrating it as soon as possible. What'll be interesting it seeing whether this can be implemented into Android for business-focused handsets or corporate smartbooks.

[Chromium Blog] (via Pocket-Lint)

Intel and Nokia have been raising a little bit of noise recently with the combination of their two netbook/smartphone operating systems "Moblin" and "Maemo"; "MeeGo", which was announced earlier this year.

Well, they've recently been showing it off at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing on a variety of platforms with various screen sizes and processors.

The operating system is still very early, but does look slick and gives some competition to Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Jolicloud on the netbook side of things, and something a little more substantial for the larger smartphones that'll be hitting the market soon.

The videos of the operating system running are after the break.

Twitter is currently having its Chirp developer conference over in San Francisco at the minute, and cofounder Evan Williams has been up on stage giving his keynote and has revealed some of the numbers behind the service.

The microblogging platform currently has just over 105 million users, which is over the top end of estimates that people have been making of between 70-100m.

They are also seeing around 55 million new tweets being posted per day, outlining the usage patterns of the site (those who use it, use it a lot), as well as over 600m search queries being served against their databases.

[Twitter Chirp Livestream]

Apple has just announced that the UK version of the iPad will not be released until the end of May citing greater-than-expected uptake in the US.

This shouldn't come as much of a shock, with the company refusing to put a finer point on the launch date since it was announced in January.

So, end of May before us in the UK get our hands on it. Month and a half after the US - nice.

[Apple]

adidas Golf has been known to keep on the technological edge of the sport with regards to its apparel, and it's stepping up once again with a new range of polos that feature CoolMax Energy technology to keep the players temperature down throughout the round.

They feature new wicking tech which draws sweat away from the body, but not only that, allow air through microfibres so that the shirt doesn't become stale when being worn for a full day of golf.

Patricia Dahan, Senior Director of Global apparel says; "From the stretch properties in the fit for optimal swing freedom, to special seam technology that minimises irritation, to its cooling properties, this shirt has everything to maximise performance."

adidas ClimaCool polos with CoolMax Energy tech should be available in retailers now onboard of both men's and woman's wear.

Apple has just dished the dirt on the new MacBook Pros, with them stuffing the 15" and 17" models with the new Core i5 and i7 chips from Intel, along with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics and HDD space bumps.

Quite strangely though, Apple has decided to bump the base HDD size on the 13", add in the new NVIDIA GeForce 320M GPU but keep it running along on an (albeit faster) Core 2 Duo. What's even more worrying, is that it now starts at £999, rather than the smidge over £900 it was about 2 hours ago.

If you're in the market for a 15" model (which unfortunately, we're not - holding off for an updated 13"...), then you're pretty well catered for, with the standard spec range starting at £1,500 for a Core i5 with 4GB RAM, going up to £1,800 for an i7 packer (although other options can be added, raising the price higher still).

The 17-incher sticks with an i5 base, with 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD, with an optional i7 chip adding £160 onto the standard £1,900.

So, you're pretty well set at the higher end, but the price bump for the 13" model seems odd and just smacks of Apple aligning prices ahead of the international iPad launch.

[Apple MacBook Pro]