Perhaps you recall that back in June, there was some confusion as to whether or not there would be web apps for Apple’s upcoming iCloud suite of products. While we maintained from the beginning that we had heard that there would be, some were certain there wouldn’t be — something which we again refuted. Anyway, this eventually led Apple to clarify that yes, there would be web apps for iCloud. Still, it wasn’t clear just how robust they’d be, or when they’d be available beyond “this fall”. Today, we’re getting more answers.

iCloud.com has just gone live. That seems to be a pretty good sign that the web component will launch alongside iCloud itself at some point in the next few months. And if the log-in screen is any indication, the web apps are going to be beautiful.

But actually, we don’t have to rely on just the log-in screen, because while it may be meant for developers to test out (only they can use the iOS syncing features found in iOS 5), actually, anyone can log on and see what the iCloud.com apps look like. Again, beautiful.

Not that this should be surprising. One of Apple’s strengths has always been aesthetics. But what’s equally nice is just how slick the apps function. Both in Safari and Chrome, all the apps feel responsive and feature many subtle transitional touches presumably using HTML5.

In addition to iCloud.com going live, Apple has also posted more information about iCloud pricing. “5GB of free storage is plenty for most people. But if you need extra space, you can always buy additional storage,” Apple notes on the site. Those prices are:

• 10 additional GB for $20 a year
• 20 additional GB for $40 a year
• 50 additional GB for $100 a year

Of note, your iCloud Photo Stream, iOS apps, music, and TV shows you buy from iTunes/the App Store do not count against your 5GB of free storage.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Here she is.

Earlier today, Google unveiled the first notebooks running Chrome OS. Or as they’re calling them, “Chromebooks”. The first two partners producing them will be Samsung and Acer. And at an event tonight in San Francisco, we got some extensive hands-on time with the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook.

Initial reaction? That’s still to come. For now, enjoy a bunch of pictures.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Digital agency CreativeFeed has produced a first infographic for the emerging field of f-commerce  (Facebook commerce).  With brands as diverse as Heinz ketchup, Barneys New York and Coke all launching f-stores – there will surely be more f-commerce infographics to emerge.

“These are post-PC devices, that need to be even easier to use than a PC.”

That was Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ closing remark as he left the stage having just announced the iPad 2 at an event today in San Francisco. And that comment really summed up the vibe of the entire event. When Jobs was on stage, he made it very clear over and over again that the iPad competition out there just doesn’t seem to get it.

And the iPad 2 is really a bet directly related to that. Apple kicked things off by noting that the iPad 2 was about much more than “marginal improvements”, but the reality is that this is what many people writing about the event will see when they look at the iPad 2. And part of that is Apple’s fault: they go out of their way not give much in terms of specs.

Again, that’s all a part of this “post-PC” era. The competition is still focusing on specs in Jobs’ mind. Apple is focusing on the total experience. Does it have a dual-core processor? Yes. But that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that it’s two times faster. That’s something real people care about and can relate to, as opposed to tech journalists.

In fact, I’m quite certain the only reason Jobs mentioned the dual-core chip at all was for those of us in the room who were wondering how it would stack up against the Android-powered Motorola Xoom. ”This will be the first dual-core tablet to ship in volume,” Jobs said, clearly to get a rise out of us in the room.

So how does the iPad 2 stack up?

I got a chance to play with one for a solid half hour after the event today in the hands-on area. It’s great. It’s everything you love about the original iPad, but better. Some will complain that this isn’t a big enough update to warrant an upgrade cost, but I have no doubt that Apple is going to sell millions of these things — and many of them to iPad 1 owners.

When you pick up the iPad 2, it is pretty incredible how much better it feels in your hands than the original iPad. I happened to bring my old iPad with me, so I pulled it out to compare. There is no comparison. The iPad 2 is much, much nicer to hold.

A huge part of this is how thin the iPad 2 is. It has slimmed down from 13.4mm to 8.8mm. It’s now slimmer than an iPhone 4. To be honest, it feels a bit like holding a Kindle now. And that’s a very good thing.

Of course, iPad 2 is still significantly heavier than a Kindle. But Apple has managed to take it from 1.5 pounds to 1.3 pounds. But perhaps just because of the thinness, it does feel significantly lighter to hold. Again, that’s a very good thing.

But another key ingredient of the iPad 2 that’s being downplayed a bit today is the new unibody build. This also helps a lot with the feel of the device. It now feels like more of a singular object, whereas the initial iPad felt a bit like a piece of aluminum build to hold a huge piece of glass. iPad 2 feels quite a bit like one of the newer iPod touches, just larger, obviously.

And despite the aesthetic changes, Apple says it has been able to maintain the excellent 10 hours battery life — which is great.

The new front and rear cameras on the device will obviously be a big selling point for some people. Apple didn’t go into the specs here, but I’m sure the cameras aren’t great from a megapixel standpoint. But again, that’s a spec. The key is that they work well for their intended purpose, which is FaceTime. And yes, they’re very good for that. My initial thought it that the iPad 2 + FaceTime will actually be used a lot more than it is on the Mac, iPod touch, or even iPhone. It seems pretty natural.

In terms of speed improvements of the hardware, it’s too hard to say at this point. I played a few games and everything ran perfect, but I can’t really recall this even being an issue with the iPad 1. Perhaps we’ll see developers create apps that can better utilize the new speed.

Certainly, iMovie and GarageBand for the iPad needs a lot of power. And both worked really well — a few seconds of loading time, but no lag once you’re doing things.

The new color option is nice and will definitely help Apple sell iPad 2s to existing iPad owners. Everyone was crowded around the white ones after the event. It’s pretty crazy that the white iPad will beat the white iPhone 4 to market.

And as crazy as may sound, I still think one of the key highlights today are the new “smart covers”. Simply put: they are awesome.

I hated the original Apple-designed case for the first iPad. I had one for a few days then immediately replaced it with an Incase one. But this new cover was clearly designed from the ground-up to be used with the iPad 2. That’s true even to the point where the cover can replace the sleep/wake functionality of the device itself. (Perhaps another step towards a button-less iPad?)

I can’t imagine anyone getting an iPad 2 without getting one of these covers, that’s how good they are.

Though it wasn’t announced at the event itself, Apple has apparently dropped the price of the original iPad by $100. For some people, that price will be enticing. But I suspect that almost everyone will go for iPad 2 instead — it’s well worth the $100 jump (depending on the model you choose to get, obviously).

“A lot of folks in this tablet market are rushing in and they’re looking at this as the next PC. Hardware and software are done by different companies and they’re talking about speeds just as they would with PCs. Every bone in our body says this is not the right approach,” Jobs said today.

Again, that’s the bet iPad 2 is making. And my initial reaction is that it will pay off. Big time. Yes, even with the potential of another iPad on the not-too-distant horizon. If the market right now is iPad 2 versus the Xoom, let’s be honest, there is no competition.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today, during their Android Honeycomb unveiling event, Google took a little bit of time on stage to mention one app: Pulse. The social news reading app began as an iPad project, but has since found a comfortable home on a wider range of devices, including Android devices. And now they’re ready to fully embrace Android tablets with Honeycomb.

Co-founder Akshay Kothari notes that they’ve been working “very closely” with Google to build the latest version of their app optimized for Honeycomb. And while it won’t be out until later this month (presumably when Honeycomb is also actually available on devices such as the Motorola Xoom), Kothari sent us some screenshots of how it will look. Find those below. For now, you can find Pulse for Android here in the new Market Webstore.

First, here’s the Honeycomb widget picker:

Here’s the Pulse Catalog in Honeycomb:

Here are the various Pulse

It’s New Year’s Eve and you know what that means — an adult beverage or two might be had by many people around the world this evening. That includes many TechCrunch staffers. And while drunk blogging is generally frowned upon, it would be interesting to see what the site would look like if everyone wrote while intoxicated. (Yes, yes, insert the NOT THAT DIFFERENT joke here.) Luckily,

Something is rotten in the state of Gmail. At least for some of us.

I thought it was maybe just me when I tweeted a couple days ago about awful Gmail performance recently. But it’s not just me. Dozens of people responded to me about that tweet. I tweeted about it again earlier today and dozens of other people responded. Some quick Twitter searches reveals many others noticing the same thing: sometime in the past couple of weeks, something has happened that has made Gmail almost unbearably slow.

It seems to be particularly bad when I first start up Gmail in the morning. Then it often gets better. Then it gets worse again. A number of people I’ve spoken with have noticed the exact same thing — including at least three of my colleagues here at TechCrunch. Opening an email can take upwards of 30 seconds to a minute. Sending one is even worse. And don’t dare try to do an email search when Gmail is acting up.

I emailed Google about the problem two days ago. I thought perhaps they were doing maintenance and this was a side effect — or perhaps it was related to the awesome Priority Inbox feature. But they told me they weren’t aware of any issue and would look into it. I haven’t heard back.

Others, meanwhile, are reporting that service seems to be working fine. But again, I’ve gotten too many responses from destinations all around the world to think this is isolated. At first I thought it might be just happening to people with massive inboxes (I’m over 10 GB now used), but I’ve spoken with a number of people who use a small amount of their storage and they’re seeing the same thing.

The most troubling thing is that Google doesn’t seem to know what is causing this. And it seem to be affecting both regular Gmail and Google Apps. That’s not good when they’re trying to do things like sue the government to get their software in the hands of federal employees.

I don’t think there’s any question that Gmail is the application I’ve used the most over the past five years. Sure, every once in a while there have been performance issues, but never like this. It really does remind me of the old days of email on 9600 baud modems. It’s getting to the point where I’m about to switch back to using a native client and pulling my main via IMAP.

Hell, at these speeds, I’m not even ruling out switching to a carrier pigeon.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today at the event at their headquarters in Palo Alto, Facebook unveiled a completely revamped Groups feature. With it, you can add people from your social graph to a new area of Facebook where you can more easily communicate with them. Below, find an initial walk through of some interesting things. (The feature is available to some today, and will be fully rolling out over the next few weeks, Facebook says.)

Here’s the Create Group pop-up:

You can set a group to “Open” “Closed” or “Secret” (the default is Closed):

As you might expect, can easily add someone to a group just by starting to type their name:

You can also change the icon of a group:

Each group can have an email address:

You can also upload your own Group Profile Picture:

Each Group has a Wall that any member can post on:

There’s a new feature which allows you to create a Doc — which anyone in the group can edit:

Here’s what editing a Doc looks like:

Here’s what Groups chat looks like:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

This weekend, 450 or so developers descended upon the San Francisco Design Center to hack. The result? Some really cool/interesting/crazy stuff being made at our TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. On Sunday, it was time to present before our selection of judges: Cyan Bannister, Brett Bullington, Rebekah Cox, Chris Dixon, Bradley Horowitz, Dean Hovey, Michael Marquez, Christopher Poole, Joshua Schachter, and Mike Schroepfer.

After 86 60-second presentations on stage, the judges went backstage to pick the ones they felt put their time to best use last night (and/or gave the best presentation on little or no sleep).

The overall winner was WiseDame, an app that allows you to easily let people you care about know where you are. For example, perhaps you told your parents that you would be home at a certain time, but you’re going to be late for some reason, you’ll get a notification to let them know why. Perhaps your phone battery is dying and you’ll be forced off the grid — you can also send out a message to let someone know this so they don’t freak out when they can’t reach you.

This app was developed with women in mind — specifically, J’aime Ohm, the sole developer, viewed it as a “black box” recorder like they have in planes, but for real life. But you can easily see this idea being applicable in a lot of ways.

Congrats to WiseDame — they’ll get some time to present during TechCrunch Disrupt, which begins tomorrow.

Below, the full list of Hackathon awards winners:

Honorable mentions — ezetop, PitchHero, Potweet, Ostrich, Display ^ N, Pinnokio, Netflix Theater

Best Demo – Active Hackers

Best Business Model — GreenZone

Funniest — Drinkerator

Creepiest – D8Coach

Top Prize — WiseDame

Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s Hackathon. We’ll have full videos of each winning presentation up later tonight.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook has had one of the most exciting years in its history in 2010, presenting extraordinary opportunities alongside substantial challenges. As part of its growth, the Facebook ecosystem is now more diverse and complex than ever.

To further understanding of the key opportunities on Facebook today, we are proud to announce the latest edition of the Facebook Quarterly Business Review, Q2/Q3 2010, our detailed report tracking Facebook’s financial growth and corporate strategy.

The Facebook Quarterly Business Review examines all major business developments affecting Facebook from the beginning of Q2 2010 through now, and is only available through Inside Facebook Gold, our research and data membership service.

As we close the third quarter of 2010, Facebook is now rapidly bridging online identity, content distribution, and monetization. Social media is now driving more traffic than search to many publishers, while developers of virtual goods-based businesses are profitably leveraging social platforms to connect with hundreds of millions of direct-paying customers. All of this change is supporting (and supported by) Facebook’s own in-house advertising platform – the powerful monetization system that has enabled the company to announce that it had become “free cash flow positive” one year ago this month.

The purpose of the Facebook Quarterly Business Review is to provide readers with a detailed overview of every key aspect of and change affecting Facebook’s business since the close of the first quarter of 2010.

The Facebook Quarterly Business Review is available as a part of your membership to Inside Facebook Gold. To join Inside Facebook Gold, and download the Facebook Quarterly Business Review, click here.

The full table of contents is below:

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook