Design is an iterative process. It takes inspiration, perhaps from others’ work, and it takes feedback from others on what you’re doing right and where you’re missing it. After all, don’t forget Picasso’s famous quote that’s been popularized by Steve Jobs: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” After the break, we’ve put together a list of a dozen of our favorite sites that can get you inspired to create and help you get feedback on the things you’ve created.

Get Inspired and Share Your Best Work

There’s many ways you could share your new designs with the world, and there’s many ways to get inspired about design. These sites bring the best of both together. They let you share your best designs for cred and feedback, and let you get inspired by looking at the logos, typefaces, letterpress, websites, and more that the top people in design are making today.

Some are more exclusive than others, so it might take a Just looking, no touching period before your ready to share your designs. But be careful: it’s easy to waste hours admiring the beautiful designs on these sites instead of actually making your own work!

Dribbble

Dribbble

Dribbble is the the world’s most popular site for sharing designs, and most of the art here is nothing short of mindblowing. But don’t rush out to sign up. While anyone can now sign up to comment and favorite shots, only the select few who are special enough to get a coveted Dribbble invite can share their work. But that’s ok. There’s enough beautiful stuff on Dribbble, you can still use it to get inspiration even if you don’t have an invite. It’s a great place to catch a glimpse of the best upcoming sites, apps, and more from the top designers in the world. Plus, the Envato design team regularly shares their latest creations on the Envato Design Team Dribbble page, so be sure to check it out to get a glimpse of what’s next for our family of sites!

Favwork

Favwork

Favwork is a newer site for sharing your designs and voting up the ones you want. It’s designed somewhat like Dribbble, but is open for anyone in the whole wide world with a Twitter account. You can whip together your designs, upload them, and share them with your friends and colleagues to see what they think. That doesn’t guarantee your design will get to the front page, though. Even though Favwork isn’t as large as Dribbble, it’s already got a large number of beautiful designs that can inspire you.

Forrst

Forrst

Forrst is a fast-growing community full of everything design-related: logos, mockups, articles on design, sample code for web design, and more. Just like most of the other site,s you can mark your favorite items, and give feedback on the things others have made. It’s almost like a customized Tumblr just for sharing your design stuff with the community, and is very nicely done. It’s also a private site, but it’s a tad easier to get Forrst invites than Dribbble invites.

Creattica

Creattica

Creattica is Envato’s own design inspiration site, and it includes an incredibly wide range of creative works. From business cards to desktop wallpapers to advertisements, you’ll find brilliant examples of the best in design here. You can subscribe to each type of design in an RSS feed so you never miss the latest stuff in your favorite category. And if you’d like to see your own work featured, you can create an account and submit it to the editor as well.

Designmoo

Designmoo

Designmoo is a design site with a mission. It’s designed to let leading designers share some of their favorite designs with the community, complete with the original source files. If you find something that inspires you, you can usually download the PSD file to tweak it for your own use or learn how others put their designs together. If you’ve got something to contribute, you can create an account and join in the fun.

Bēhance

Bēhance

The Bēhance network is a great place to look at designs and images from a variety of creative industries. It’s used by many leading firms to discover upcoming talent, so if you think you’ve got a chance at design stardom, you can feature your pictures on it and create your own creative portfolio. With full-sized images, it’s got a different focus than the other design sites we listed, but it’s still a great spot to get inspired or share your work with the world.

Zootool

Zootool

Zootool may be a bookmarking tool, but it’s one of the best for saving the design inspirations you come across online. All of your bookmarks are viewable as image galleries, which you can flip through for inspiration or share with the world. You can also view popular public bookmarks from your account, giving you a fresh dose of inspiration every time you log in. Check out our review to learn more about this great tool for saving your favorite designs: Zootool: Creative & Fun Bookmarking.

GitHub

Github: If coding design you crave, Github may just be your fave

GitHub isn’t the first thing you’d think of when looking for design inspiration. It’s a site to store your source code in Git, and quickly find and fork other publicly available code.  Not the kind of thing designers usually are looking for. But, most web design is powered by intricitate CSS and HTML code, and there’s tons on GitHub for you to learn from. When you’re ready to get serious about coding that masterful site, check out what the pros are doing with CSS and more, and find some great new Javascript to integrate into your site. And if you’d like to see what our Envato dev team is up to with code, check out the Envato team GitHub profile.

And When Feedback’s All You Need…

Sometimes, you’ve already got all the inspiration you need, and you’re not ready to share your design with the world. In fact, you might want to get some more private feedback from the people you trust the most. In that case, there’s some great design apps that are ready for you. Here’s some of our favorites.

CloudApp

CloudApp

CloudApp is one of my most-used apps, both to share random images and files with others, and to get feedback on quick snippets of text or parts of a design. You can upload files through the web app, or drag-and-drop them to the Cloud icon in your Mac menu bar or FluffyApp in Windows. Your files can be kept private or shared with the world: your choice. Upgrade to a pro account, and you can share your designs, text, links, and more with your own private short URLs, too. For more info, check out our sister site Mac.AppStorm’s review of CloudApp: Effortlessly Share Files with CloudApp.

Notebox

Notebox

Notebox is designed for getting feedback on designes of all types. Upload your images, PDFs, or any other design file, add your own notes about the design, and share it with anyone you want. Come back later, and you can flip through all of the comments and see what everyone thought about your designs. One great option is to share multiple styles of your design, then check and see everyone’s feedback on the different ones to see which one will be a hit. Learn more about it at our review: Easy Design Feedback with Notebox.

Notable

Notable

Notable is a great app to help you get feedback on your full site and other large designs. Upload an image, share it with your colleagues and test groups, and see what they think about what you’ve created. They can add notes and markup your design, so you can see what you should change for next time. For more info, check out our review of Notable, though don’t forget, you can upload any design for critique, not just websites: Easy Website Feedback with Notable

FiveSecondTest

FiveSecondTest

FiveSecondTest is a brilliant way to see if your design comes across to viewers like you think it will. It’s designed to be used for testing website designs, but can work for any image testing you want: logos, typography, layouts, and more. Just upload your image, then enter questions to see what your design made users think of. If people figured out what your design was for, congrats … you must be on the right track! Otherwise, you can go back to the drawing board and tweak your design so it makes sense to everyone.

Conclusion

If great resources and examples could make you a world-class designer, then we’d all be making such beautiful works of art that the MoMA would be overflowing with designs. Sadly, it takes more than just looking at designs to get good at it. You’ve got to keep trying, get feedback, incorporate it into your design, rinse, and repeat. Once you’ve done it enough, you’ll be able to take the best ideas and put them together with your creativity into something so impressive and unique that it’s finally your own true work.

These apps and sites should help you get started, but there’s tons more out there that can help you learn to be a world-class designer. What’s your favorite design-centric web apps and sites that you can’t live without?

Go to Source

Design is an iterative process. It takes inspiration, perhaps from others’ work, and it takes feedback from others on what you’re doing right and where you’re missing it. After all, don’t forget Picasso’s famous quote that’s been popularized by Steve Jobs: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” After the break, we’ve put together a list of a dozen of our favorite sites that can get you inspired to create and help you get feedback on the things you’ve created.

Get Inspired and Share Your Best Work

There’s many ways you could share your new designs with the world, and there’s many ways to get inspired about design. These sites bring the best of both together. They let you share your best designs for cred and feedback, and let you get inspired by looking at the logos, typefaces, letterpress, websites, and more that the top people in design are making today.

Some are more exclusive than others, so it might take a Just looking, no touching period before your ready to share your designs. But be careful: it’s easy to waste hours admiring the beautiful designs on these sites instead of actually making your own work!

Dribbble

Dribbble

Dribbble is the the world’s most popular site for sharing designs, and most of the art here is nothing short of mindblowing. But don’t rush out to sign up. While anyone can now sign up to comment and favorite shots, only the select few who are special enough to get a coveted Dribbble invite can share their work. But that’s ok. There’s enough beautiful stuff on Dribbble, you can still use it to get inspiration even if you don’t have an invite. It’s a great place to catch a glimpse of the best upcoming sites, apps, and more from the top designers in the world. Plus, the Envato design team regularly shares their latest creations on the Envato Design Team Dribbble page, so be sure to check it out to get a glimpse of what’s next for our family of sites!

Favwork

Favwork

Favwork is a newer site for sharing your designs and voting up the ones you want. It’s designed somewhat like Dribbble, but is open for anyone in the whole wide world with a Twitter account. You can whip together your designs, upload them, and share them with your friends and colleagues to see what they think. That doesn’t guarantee your design will get to the front page, though. Even though Favwork isn’t as large as Dribbble, it’s already got a large number of beautiful designs that can inspire you.

Forrst

Forrst

Forrst is a fast-growing community full of everything design-related: logos, mockups, articles on design, sample code for web design, and more. Just like most of the other site,s you can mark your favorite items, and give feedback on the things others have made. It’s almost like a customized Tumblr just for sharing your design stuff with the community, and is very nicely done. It’s also a private site, but it’s a tad easier to get Forrst invites than Dribbble invites.

Creattica

Creattica

Creattica is Envato’s own design inspiration site, and it includes an incredibly wide range of creative works. From business cards to desktop wallpapers to advertisements, you’ll find brilliant examples of the best in design here. You can subscribe to each type of design in an RSS feed so you never miss the latest stuff in your favorite category. And if you’d like to see your own work featured, you can create an account and submit it to the editor as well.

Designmoo

Designmoo

Designmoo is a design site with a mission. It’s designed to let leading designers share some of their favorite designs with the community, complete with the original source files. If you find something that inspires you, you can usually download the PSD file to tweak it for your own use or learn how others put their designs together. If you’ve got something to contribute, you can create an account and join in the fun.

Bēhance

Bēhance

The Bēhance network is a great place to look at designs and images from a variety of creative industries. It’s used by many leading firms to discover upcoming talent, so if you think you’ve got a chance at design stardom, you can feature your pictures on it and create your own creative portfolio. With full-sized images, it’s got a different focus than the other design sites we listed, but it’s still a great spot to get inspired or share your work with the world.

Zootool

Zootool

Zootool may be a bookmarking tool, but it’s one of the best for saving the design inspirations you come across online. All of your bookmarks are viewable as image galleries, which you can flip through for inspiration or share with the world. You can also view popular public bookmarks from your account, giving you a fresh dose of inspiration every time you log in. Check out our review to learn more about this great tool for saving your favorite designs: Zootool: Creative & Fun Bookmarking.

GitHub

Github: If coding design you crave, Github may just be your fave

GitHub isn’t the first thing you’d think of when looking for design inspiration. It’s a site to store your source code in Git, and quickly find and fork other publicly available code.  Not the kind of thing designers usually are looking for. But, most web design is powered by intricitate CSS and HTML code, and there’s tons on GitHub for you to learn from. When you’re ready to get serious about coding that masterful site, check out what the pros are doing with CSS and more, and find some great new Javascript to integrate into your site. And if you’d like to see what our Envato dev team is up to with code, check out the Envato team GitHub profile.

And When Feedback’s All You Need…

Sometimes, you’ve already got all the inspiration you need, and you’re not ready to share your design with the world. In fact, you might want to get some more private feedback from the people you trust the most. In that case, there’s some great design apps that are ready for you. Here’s some of our favorites.

CloudApp

CloudApp

CloudApp is one of my most-used apps, both to share random images and files with others, and to get feedback on quick snippets of text or parts of a design. You can upload files through the web app, or drag-and-drop them to the Cloud icon in your Mac menu bar or FluffyApp in Windows. Your files can be kept private or shared with the world: your choice. Upgrade to a pro account, and you can share your designs, text, links, and more with your own private short URLs, too. For more info, check out our sister site Mac.AppStorm’s review of CloudApp: Effortlessly Share Files with CloudApp.

Notebox

Notebox

Notebox is designed for getting feedback on designes of all types. Upload your images, PDFs, or any other design file, add your own notes about the design, and share it with anyone you want. Come back later, and you can flip through all of the comments and see what everyone thought about your designs. One great option is to share multiple styles of your design, then check and see everyone’s feedback on the different ones to see which one will be a hit. Learn more about it at our review: Easy Design Feedback with Notebox.

Notable

Notable

Notable is a great app to help you get feedback on your full site and other large designs. Upload an image, share it with your colleagues and test groups, and see what they think about what you’ve created. They can add notes and markup your design, so you can see what you should change for next time. For more info, check out our review of Notable, though don’t forget, you can upload any design for critique, not just websites: Easy Website Feedback with Notable

FiveSecondTest

FiveSecondTest

FiveSecondTest is a brilliant way to see if your design comes across to viewers like you think it will. It’s designed to be used for testing website designs, but can work for any image testing you want: logos, typography, layouts, and more. Just upload your image, then enter questions to see what your design made users think of. If people figured out what your design was for, congrats … you must be on the right track! Otherwise, you can go back to the drawing board and tweak your design so it makes sense to everyone.

Conclusion

If great resources and examples could make you a world-class designer, then we’d all be making such beautiful works of art that the MoMA would be overflowing with designs. Sadly, it takes more than just looking at designs to get good at it. You’ve got to keep trying, get feedback, incorporate it into your design, rinse, and repeat. Once you’ve done it enough, you’ll be able to take the best ideas and put them together with your creativity into something so impressive and unique that it’s finally your own true work.

These apps and sites should help you get started, but there’s tons more out there that can help you learn to be a world-class designer. What’s your favorite design-centric web apps and sites that you can’t live without?

Go to Source

At one point during Facebook’s “something awesome” event on Wednesday, more than 60,000 people were simultaneously tuned online to an unassuming meeting room at the company’s headquarters to watch Mark Zuckerberg and cohorts unveil a slew of new features for the social-networking site.

While that might not be quite on the level of a Steve Jobs keynote, it’s impressive given the relative regularity of Facebook product launches and the lack of suspense surrounding the day’s announcements (we’ve known Skype video chat was coming for nearly a week).

The ever-growing ubiquity of Facebook was certainly a focal point of Zuckerberg’s remarks. He confirmed the company now has more than 750 million active users and shared a personal anecdote about an elderly neighbor conversing with him on Wednesday morning about the event and his desire for video chat.

Certainly, a sense that Facebook has “won” the social network battle seemed to permeate, with Zuckerberg saying that the era of connecting people — forming the underlying social graph that makes Facebook work — “is more or less done at this point.”

It’s with that backdrop that we learned — or at least confirmed — several things about Facebook and where it currently sees itself in the technology world.

More About: facebook, Skype

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Exclusive - SHAPE Services, the company behind the immensely popular, cross-platform IM+ messaging applications (and then some), has agreed to acquire CrispApp, the Hong Kong based developer of the fone app for iOS (iTunes link). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we’ve poked around and learned that the purchase price was approximately $200,000.

As a result of the acquisition (and the partnership agreement between SHAPE and CrisApp, which was forged prior to this deal), SHAPE says it will soon launch a stand-alone iPhone application called IM+ Video – expect it to hit the App Store within the next 10 days.

IM+ Video will be a mobile video chat application for Facebook, enabling users to chat from mobile to mobile, mobile to desktop and the other way around, free of charge.

Basically, it will be the fone voice chat app combined with CrispApp’s video technology. The fone app will, however, not be removed from the App Store, though, SHAPE Services CEO Igor Berezovsky tells me.

I spoke to Berezovsky earlier this morning, and asked him how things are going for SHAPE. Very well, apparently: the bootstrapped company has been profitable since 2002 – Berezovsky jokes that that was 5 years before Steve Jobs made the word “app” popular.

There are currently roughly 12.5 million registered IM+ users, and SHAPE’s system process about 1.7 billion messages and 750 million ad impressions per month.

This isn’t the first acquisition by SHAPE Services. Back in 2008, the company acquired mobile app developer Warelex for $2.4 million.

Go to Source

Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!

Best of iPad.AppStorm

Best of Android.AppStorm

Best of iPhone.AppStorm

Best of Web.AppStorm

Best of Mac.AppStorm

Share Your Ideas

Is there something in particular you’d like to see on the site next month? We’d absolutely love to hear your suggestions for articles, topics and giveaways. Just let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading AppStorm!

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Advertise here with BSA

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What is 5minSites?

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When do you launch?

We’re adding the last few features to the app and the beta version should be done by the end of June!

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How do I get to use it?

Because it’s pretty innovative and it needs a lot of resources, during the beta version we have to limit access to 1,000 people who subscribe on our teaser page so be sure to get there fast.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

From New URL to Full-blown Website in 5 Minutes?

Go to Source

After giving an initial description of the service, Jobs went on to describe the his views on files and the cloud around 82 minutes into the keynote:

Now some people think the cloud is just a hard disk in the sky, right? And you take a bunch of stuff, and you put it in your Dropbox or your iDisk or whatever, and it transfers it up to the cloud and stores it. Then you drag whatever you want back out and store it on your devices.

We think it’s way more than that, and we call it iCloud.

~ Steve Jobs, June 6, 2011

A Dream From the ’90′s, Fulfilled

Interestingly, iCloud is Jobs’ response to a dream he realized over 2 decades ago. During a speech at the ’97 WWDC, shortly after his return to Apple, Jobs described how he worked. All of his files and more were stored on a server, and could be accessed from any of his computers over high speed (for that time, anyhow) network. Whether he was at home, or in his office at NeXT, Apple, or Pixar, he could log in and all of his files and settings would be there. And this wasn’t something brand new, either: he’d already been doing it for 8 years!

Steve Jobs introducing iCloud, 2 decades after he started using a similar system on his own.

The Brave New World of Computing

The world of computing has been rapidly changing over the past few years. In the past, most of us would have only used one PC during the day, unlike Steve Jobs. Our files lived on individual computers, floppies, and CDs, and that was fine back when our computer never went 3 feet away from our desks.

Today, however, it’s not uncommon at all to use a computer at your office, a laptop at lunch with a client, a smartphone on the way home, and a tablet or Internet-connected game console or TV at home in the evening. We expect to be able to check our email, grab that important spreadsheet, update our blog, or share photos to our Facebook friends just the same, no matter what device we happen to be using.

Many of us have solved the problem over the years. IMAP, iCal, Exchange, and more have let us get our mail, contacts, and calendars synced between any devices we want. For the most part, you don’t need to think about it: it just works. Then, Dropbox has solved the file end of our problem, and we can now easily sync documents, pictures, music, and more between our computers, phones, and the cloud. So many mobile apps have added Dropbox support, it’s become the de facto standard way to keep your digital life synchronized.

It’s Not Just Apple

Still, though, that’s not the simplest solution. Sure, most of us can figure out how to save our various types of files in Dropbox, and can add an IMAP account to our phones. But what about new computer users? Why should they have to figure out what a .xlsx file is, or why they need to save their files in a certain folder?

Apple’s iCloud tries to remove the idea of files, relying instead on syncing the actual things you’re working on: documents, pictures, presentations, whatever. Sure, at the end of the day, it’s the same thing. But iCloud extracts the technical parts, and just syncs what you’re working on with the correct applications. Anyone can understand that.

Google approaches data in the exact same way. Steven Levy’s new book about Google, In the Plex, reveals that Google did, at one point, plan to release a Dropbox-like Gdrive. Sundar Pichai, currently senior vice president of Chrome at Google, decided that traditional files were dated, and were simply part of the old style of computing.

“Think about it,” said Pichai. “You just want to get information into the cloud. When people use our Google Docs, there are no more files. You just start editing in the cloud, and there’s never a file.”

This was an entirely new concept to their team, but the simplicity won the team over. Today, we all store lots of data in Google’s cloud, but seldom have to think about the actual files behind it. For users, with cloud computing, traditional files may well be a thing of the past, at least if Google and Apple have anything to do with it.

Google: All of your data in the browser

Web Apps, Native Apps, or Both?

Between Apple and Google, the biggest difference is not in how they think about data. With iCloud and Google Apps, both Apple and Google treat the cloud as your data’s true home. They both also try to take away the concepts of files and saving. Instead, your data is in documents, pictures, or whatever you’re creating, and the apps used to create and edit automatically save their changes.

The difference is in how they think you should access and create it. Apple thinks you should access this data through rich native applications, such as the iWork apps in iOS and iPhoto on Macs. Google, on the other hand, feels that you should primarily use and create documents and more directly in their web apps. Apple locks you into their operating systems, but offers beautiful and advanced applications that work anywhere, even if you’re offline and can’t access the cloud. Google let’s you use their services from any browser, but for the most part, your data’s inaccessible if you’re offline.

Google Docs versus iWork Pages

That’s My Data!

Truth be told, though, Google Docs and Gmail are only applications in your browser that can access your data in Google’s cloud. There’s no reason Google couldn’t make an offline, installable Google Docs app that worked like iWork, and there’s no reason Apple couldn’t make an iWork web app (except it might be tough to replicate all of it’s features in HTML5). The difference is their respective philosophy on how apps should run, and that will be the defining difference in all major cloud products.

Storing data in the cloud is and should be separate from the individual apps used with the data, to make your own data more moveable between services. Web apps should, theoretically, be able to open your data from any cloud service, and desktop or mobile apps should be able to do the same. If our main “computer”, the true home of our data, is to be the cloud, then the cloud services we use to store our data should be able to work with any app. In an ideal world, you should be able to add your iCloud credentials into Google Docs, and use that app to edit your files just the same.

Will this ever happen? Or will the cloud continue to be a fractured mess of competing companies siloing our data off into more and more services? That is one of the major questions the leaders of cloud computing need to address.

After all, if it’s my data, I should be able to store it where I want and use it as I want. Files or no files, our data should be ours, free to use as we wish.

Go to Source

If you already have the Steve Jobs action figure, it’s possible that you’ve been lusting after an Apple-flavored comic book for a while now. Well, lust no longer.

This August, Bluewater Productions will be shipping a new comic book, Steve Jobs: Co-Founder of Apple, which will be on sale at comic book stores and via Amazon for $3.99.

According to CNET, the book will run 32 pages, and will detail Jobs’s “legendary drive to the top and his continuing fight to stay there.”

If you recall, Bluewater Productions also penned a comic book bio of Mark Zuckerberg — that one runs a whopping 48 pages.

Bluewater’s version of Job’s life isn’t the only tome about the entrepreneur set for release. iSteve: The Book of Jobs is slated for publication on March 6, 2012, and will be written by former Time magazine and CNN boss Walter Isaacson. The book has the distinction of being an official biography, which is significant because Jobs is famously guarded about his private life.

We wonder how the two works will compare.

More About: apple, Bluewater Productions, comic book, pop culture, steve jobs

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Steve Jobs presented his plans for a giant, spaceship-shaped campus to the Cupertino City Council Tuesday.

“Apple is growing like a weed,” he said. “And as you know, we’ve always been in Cupertino.”

The company has staff scattered in rented buildings throughout the city. The plan for the future campus puts 12,000 to 13,000 employees inside a single four-story oval building.

Jobs, fresh off of WWDC, made a convincing case for what he calls “a shot at building the best office building in the world.”

By moving parking underground, 80% of the 150-acre property will be landscaped. Apple has hired the lead arborist from Stanford to fill it with 6,000 trees, and the company will build its own “energy center” power source.

Apple also pays more taxes than any other company in Cupertino, Jobs reminded the somewhat starstruck council.

“We’d like to continue to stay here and pay taxes,” he said. “Because if we can’t, we have to go someplace like Mountain View.”

More About: apple, cupertino, office, trending

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Go to Source

Steve Jobs presented his plans for a giant, spaceship-shaped campus to the Cupertino City Council Tuesday.

“Apple is growing like a weed,” he said. “And as you know, we’ve always been in Cupertino.”

The company has staff scattered in rented buildings throughout the city. The plan for the future campus puts 12,000 to 13,000 employees inside a single four-story oval building.

Jobs, fresh off of WWDC, made a convincing case for what he calls “a shot at building the best office building in the world.”

By moving parking underground, 80% of the 150-acre property will be landscaped. Apple has hired the lead arborist from Stanford to fill it with 6,000 trees, and the company will build its own “energy center” power source.

Apple also pays more taxes than any other company in Cupertino, Jobs reminded the somewhat starstruck council.

“We’d like to continue to stay here and pay taxes,” he said. “Because if we can’t, we have to go someplace like Mountain View.”

More About: apple, cupertino, office, trending

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

This is where the marketing kicks into overdrive. Apple says all of this in very interesting terms on its iCloud site:

It gives you instant access to your music, apps, latest photos, and more. And it keeps your email, contacts, and calendars up to date across all your devices. No syncing required.

Obviously, this is complete hogwash from the technical perspective. There is some process that will synchronize the data stored in the cloud with a given device. It may be automatically synchronized and not require any input from a user, but it is still some level of synchronization. This is just pure marketing spin. However, there are some interesting things that go along with this marketing spin. First, perception is reality. If Apple is telling users there is no sync, and users do not need to initiate it, then it looks like it does not exist. Second, Apple has always made things look easier than they really are. VentureBeat has an excellent example of this for the iCloud offering:

I think Apple presents a friendlier vision of the cloud than Google. You don’t have to think of the cloud as a Web browser or, as Apple chief executive Steve Jobs put it during the keynote today, as a “hard drive in the sky”. If you watch  Google’s video promoting Chrome OS, it’s certainly funny and clever, but it’s also working overtime to try to explain a concept that’s alien to most consumers. iCloud, on the other hand, should just work — you continue to use your favorite applications in the same way, and when you switch to a new device, all your applications, settings, and files will be there for you.

Apple says things will “just work” and they make sure that it seems that way. Your apps will be on all of your iOS devices, making the idea of cloud data seamless. They also do not want users uploading their data to the cloud, like Google Music requires, because that looks like too much work. Keeping it simple and just updating iTunes with the appropriate functionality continues the idea that everything works like magic. That sort of marketing can go a long way, and ease-of-use can help support their claims.

iCloud is also much bigger than just the music offering. It is a single cloud platform. Google does not have this sort of unified vision. Google Docs allows you to store almost any type of file, but your music lives in the Google Music service. Your contacts are also completely separate as well. This could make the Google cloud platform more difficult to sell to users because you need to go to several different applications in order to keep your life and devices in sync. In addition to the basic conceptual differences, there is the way in which the data is accessed. Apps may be simpler to use in some cases, but HTML5 is changing a lot of that. Without synchronizing apps between iOS devices, iCloud could have been dead on arrival. Instead it is a complete and unified solution that can easily give Google’s free services some serious competition.

The big differentiator between the various cloud services could really be the platforms themselves. Google is typically very good with providing APIs for its services, while Apple has not been quite as friendly to developers. Google Docs does provide an interesting platform with the ability to add Apps Script, and there are some very useful plugins for the platform. Apple has a more typical API for its applications, and while it has not been overly friendly to developers, this newest release has shone that it will also implement features from users favorite non-Apple applications. This type of activity can alienate developers that are the lifeblood of a platform. However, there is a very good reason for developers to return to the iOS platform, and VentureBeat has an excellent description:

For some developers, Apple’s keynote today was more of a kick in the crotch than a bear hug. And yet, like someone trapped in a dysfunctional relationship, they’ll keep coming back for more. That’s because even though it may run roughshod over a few developers from time to time, Apple still has a lot of what they need…. Where else are you going to get easy access to 225 million potential customers’ credit cards, without breaking the law?

The last sentence is critical. Because users have given their credit cards to Apple through iTunes, it has given developers a way to easily generate revenue. We all know that revenue is important to any business, but the difference is that Google does not have an easy purchasing method like iTunes. Granted, Google does have an Android market, but Android is only one aspect of their cloud platform. Developers for the Google platform need a way to have users quickly purchase their plugin or application. This is another area where Google’s disjointed offerings could have a significant impact. Developers writing applications for your platform can be the deciding factor on whether you are successful. Developers will go where the money is, so having a user population of 225 million is very attractive.

If Google, or any other cloud platform, really wants to compete with iCloud, they need a unified solution that makes it easy for users to purchase applications as well as making it easy for developers to work with the platform. Anything else will mean that iCloud will own the iFuture.

Originally published at Regular Geek

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This is where the marketing kicks into overdrive. Apple says all of this in very interesting terms on its iCloud site:

It gives you instant access to your music, apps, latest photos, and more. And it keeps your email, contacts, and calendars up to date across all your devices. No syncing required.

Obviously, this is complete hogwash from the technical perspective. There is some process that will synchronize the data stored in the cloud with a given device. It may be automatically synchronized and not require any input from a user, but it is still some level of synchronization. This is just pure marketing spin. However, there are some interesting things that go along with this marketing spin. First, perception is reality. If Apple is telling users there is no sync, and users do not need to initiate it, then it looks like it does not exist. Second, Apple has always made things look easier than they really are. VentureBeat has an excellent example of this for the iCloud offering:

I think Apple presents a friendlier vision of the cloud than Google. You don’t have to think of the cloud as a Web browser or, as Apple chief executive Steve Jobs put it during the keynote today, as a “hard drive in the sky”. If you watch  Google’s video promoting Chrome OS, it’s certainly funny and clever, but it’s also working overtime to try to explain a concept that’s alien to most consumers. iCloud, on the other hand, should just work — you continue to use your favorite applications in the same way, and when you switch to a new device, all your applications, settings, and files will be there for you.

Apple says things will “just work” and they make sure that it seems that way. Your apps will be on all of your iOS devices, making the idea of cloud data seamless. They also do not want users uploading their data to the cloud, like Google Music requires, because that looks like too much work. Keeping it simple and just updating iTunes with the appropriate functionality continues the idea that everything works like magic. That sort of marketing can go a long way, and ease-of-use can help support their claims.

iCloud is also much bigger than just the music offering. It is a single cloud platform. Google does not have this sort of unified vision. Google Docs allows you to store almost any type of file, but your music lives in the Google Music service. Your contacts are also completely separate as well. This could make the Google cloud platform more difficult to sell to users because you need to go to several different applications in order to keep your life and devices in sync. In addition to the basic conceptual differences, there is the way in which the data is accessed. Apps may be simpler to use in some cases, but HTML5 is changing a lot of that. Without synchronizing apps between iOS devices, iCloud could have been dead on arrival. Instead it is a complete and unified solution that can easily give Google’s free services some serious competition.

The big differentiator between the various cloud services could really be the platforms themselves. Google is typically very good with providing APIs for its services, while Apple has not been quite as friendly to developers. Google Docs does provide an interesting platform with the ability to add Apps Script, and there are some very useful plugins for the platform. Apple has a more typical API for its applications, and while it has not been overly friendly to developers, this newest release has shone that it will also implement features from users favorite non-Apple applications. This type of activity can alienate developers that are the lifeblood of a platform. However, there is a very good reason for developers to return to the iOS platform, and VentureBeat has an excellent description:

For some developers, Apple’s keynote today was more of a kick in the crotch than a bear hug. And yet, like someone trapped in a dysfunctional relationship, they’ll keep coming back for more. That’s because even though it may run roughshod over a few developers from time to time, Apple still has a lot of what they need…. Where else are you going to get easy access to 225 million potential customers’ credit cards, without breaking the law?

The last sentence is critical. Because users have given their credit cards to Apple through iTunes, it has given developers a way to easily generate revenue. We all know that revenue is important to any business, but the difference is that Google does not have an easy purchasing method like iTunes. Granted, Google does have an Android market, but Android is only one aspect of their cloud platform. Developers for the Google platform need a way to have users quickly purchase their plugin or application. This is another area where Google’s disjointed offerings could have a significant impact. Developers writing applications for your platform can be the deciding factor on whether you are successful. Developers will go where the money is, so having a user population of 225 million is very attractive.

If Google, or any other cloud platform, really wants to compete with iCloud, they need a unified solution that makes it easy for users to purchase applications as well as making it easy for developers to work with the platform. Anything else will mean that iCloud will own the iFuture.

Originally published at Regular Geek

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Apple trotted out impressive stats about all kinds of things, but there was no mention about iAd penetration, revenue driven, or new capabilities.

Apple doesn’t really miss opportunities to talk about their success, so it’s probably safe to say that the iAd has been a bit of a disappointment so far.

The Hope

When Apple launched the iAd, people had high hopes for what they might be able to do for the mobile advertising industry. A lot of the common thinking was that Apple had revolutionized so many other industries, that perhaps they could do something new and amazing with these high quality mobile ads.

While Apple wasn’t in the advertising business like other companies, people thought their creativity and successful ad campaigns of their own might allow them to take mobile advertising to a new level.

Not so fast my friend.

The Results

Dan Frommer from AlleyInsider did an article about the iAd progress in March. Some notable things in it were that the price of iAds was cut in half, there was a mixed reaction from agencies, and that the iAd sales team had lost a bunch of people.

Outside of the advertising industry, I don’t feel like the iAd has had much impact either. As a user of many iPhone apps, I can’t ever recall even seeing an iAd. Perhaps I have, but if so it definitely wasn’t memorable. And I’m somebody who actually cares about advertising!

The Future

Apple can obviously choose to do what they want and experiment wherever they want. However, I’m not sure advertising is in their core DNA. After all, at the developer conference yesterday Steve Jobs himself said in reference to their mail product:

“No ads,” he boasted. “We build products that we want for ourselves, too, and we just don’t want ads.”

That doesn’t sound like the CEO of a company that really is 100% behind mobile advertising.

Has Jobs learned that “mobile display ads” don’t work? Has Apple just struggled to gain traction?

Or perhaps, is mobile advertising just going to really take off when it’s entirely different and more of the form of location-based deals? But doesn’t that only work for local businesses? How do national brands get in front of people on their mobile device?

The answers still aren’t there, but as more of people’s computing time AND entertainment time shifts to their mobile devices, you can bet there will be a lot of companies trying to figure out how to get in front of people. Just don’t expect Apple to solve it.

Originally published at Conversion Rater

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Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!

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At WWDC 2011, Steve Jobs unveiled iTunes in the Cloud and “one more thing” goodie iTunes Match, a move that TuneCore CEO and founder Jeff Price believes will monetize piracy and reset the music industry.

iTunes in the Cloud will allow users to download any songs purchased in iTunes to all of their devices, at no extra charge (up to 5GB of music). Once the service is launched — likely Monday — any music purchased on iTunes from here will be synced automatically.

While this is all well and good — and a long time coming — the real clincher here is iTunes Match, which will automatically, and in a matter of minutes, match songs that you ripped to songs in the store and add them to your library. You won’t have to pay for each individual song, but you will have to shell out about $25 a year for the ability to have your library available.

“This puts together a model that allows people to make money off of pirated music,” says Price, pointing out that users who pirate music will end up paying for it anyway if they decide to go with iTunes Match, putting money back in the hands of rights holders.

“The gap between those two things have never been bridged before — the needs of the consumer and the rights holders,” he adds, pointing out how the service benefits both parties, while recent products like Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta launched without label participation, and consequently, reimbursement.

Jobs did not mention revenue split during the conference, but the rumors say that publishers will garner 12% of the revenue, major labels will get 58% and Apple will keep 30%. Price also tells us that all bands on iTunes using TuneCore will be available on both iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match.

“Napster trained people to download music and listen to it on their computers,” he says. “This new service will help people become more comfortable with the idea of streaming their music. And that’s what resets the whole music industry. Reeducating the consumers on how to listen to music.”

In that respect, Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud could be just the thing that finally legitimizes the likes of music subscription services like Rdio, MOG and Spotify. “It’s great to see Apple bringing more awareness to online music streaming,” says a rep from Grooveshark. “We certainly don’t view iCloud as competitive to us, because the service that iCloud offers really isn’t the same as Grooveshark.”

What do you think of Price’s assertions? Is change really afoot in the music industry?

Photo courtesy of Flickr, karindalziel

More About: amazon, apple, Google, itunes-in-the-cloud, itunes-match, jeff-price, music, piracy, tunecore

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At WWDC 2011, Steve Jobs unveiled iTunes in the Cloud and “one more thing” goodie iTunes Match, a move that TuneCore CEO and founder Jeff Price believes will monetize piracy and reset the music industry.

iTunes in the Cloud will allow users to download any songs purchased in iTunes to all of their devices, at no extra charge (up to 5GB of music). Once the service is launched — likely Monday — any music purchased on iTunes from here will be synced automatically.

While this is all well and good — and a long time coming — the real clincher here is iTunes Match, which will automatically, and in a matter of minutes, match songs that you ripped to songs in the store and add them to your library. You won’t have to pay for each individual song, but you will have to shell out about $25 a year for the ability to have your library available.

“This puts together a model that allows people to make money off of pirated music,” says Price, pointing out that users who pirate music will end up paying for it anyway if they decide to go with iTunes Match, putting money back in the hands of rights holders.

“The gap between those two things have never been bridged before — the needs of the consumer and the rights holders,” he adds, pointing out how the service benefits both parties, while recent products like Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta launched without label participation, and consequently, reimbursement.

Jobs did not mention revenue split during the conference, but the rumors say that publishers will garner 12% of the revenue, major labels will get 58% and Apple will keep 30%. Price also tells us that all bands on iTunes using TuneCore will be available on both iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match.

“Napster trained people to download music and listen to it on their computers,” he says. “This new service will help people become more comfortable with the idea of streaming their music. And that’s what resets the whole music industry. Reeducating the consumers on how to listen to music.”

In that respect, Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud could be just the thing that finally legitimizes the likes of music subscription services like Rdio, MOG and Spotify. “It’s great to see Apple bringing more awareness to online music streaming,” says a rep from Grooveshark. “We certainly don’t view iCloud as competitive to us, because the service that iCloud offers really isn’t the same as Grooveshark.”

What do you think of Price’s assertions? Is change really afoot in the music industry?

Photo courtesy of Flickr, karindalziel

More About: amazon, apple, Google, itunes-in-the-cloud, itunes-match, jeff-price, music, piracy, tunecore

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Originally posted at The Digital Home

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Originally posted at News – Apple

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Apple has indicated that Steve Jobs will participate in the opening keynote address at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), which kicks off on June 6.

In a statement, the company says that Jobs will be joined by “a team of Apple executives,” who will announce Lion, iOS5 and iCloud, the company’s long-rumored cloud-based services offering.

Jobs has been on medical leave since January but has remained on as CEO, with COO Tim Cook leading Apple’s day-to-day operations in the interim. Jobs, who also took a leave of absence in 2009 following a liver transplant, also delivered the keynote at Apple’s iPad 2 event in March.

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Apple has indicated that Steve Jobs will participate in the opening keynote address at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), which kicks off on June 6.

In a statement, the company says that Jobs will be joined by “a team of Apple executives,” who will announce Lion, iOS5 and iCloud, the company’s long-rumored cloud-based services offering.

Jobs has been on medical leave since January but has remained on as CEO, with COO Tim Cook leading Apple’s day-to-day operations in the interim. Jobs, who also took a leave of absence in 2009 following a liver transplant, also delivered the keynote at Apple’s iPad 2 event in March.

More About: apple, steve jobs, wwdc

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Originally posted at The Digital Home

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I just wonder how much you actually feel Steve’s hands clutching you inside your pocket,compelling you into thinking of buying the iPhone 5?

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I just wonder how much you actually feel Steve’s hands clutching you inside your pocket,compelling you into thinking of buying the iPhone 5?

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Senators, representatives, state officials and entire foreign countries have all requested a response from Apple regarding the involuntary logging of location data in iOS devices.

And according to MacRumors, Apple’s Steve Jobs has broken his silence to a random, unnamed MacRumors reader.  Here’s the alleged email correspondence:

Q: Steve,

Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.

A: Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.

Sent from my iPhone

Always the skeptic, I of course question the legitimacy of this brief conversation…but if that response doesn’t sound like Steve Jobs then I don’t know what does.  The only way I would’ve been sure that it was really Jobs is if he would’ve referred to the claims as “magical.”

The unidentified sender of the email query should be told that tests confirmed last week the Google was also mining for location data through Android devices much more aggressively and much less anonymously than they led on.

Today, more information emerged about the now famous consolidated.db file.  The WSJ reported that through their own tests they found that disabling location services on your iDevices does not stop the logging of location data.  Many had thought this would be a quick fix to the problem.

Whether this was really Jobs or not, you have to expect a more formal response in the next few days.  The media firestorm around this topic began almost a week ago.

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Do you love the iAds you see on your iPhone or iPad so much that you want to have them on hand for reference? If so, Apple’s got an app for you.

On Tuesday, the company released iAd Gallery, a free app that, as the name implies, is a collection of iAds. While the impetus for the launch is unclear, it comes as Apple has had trouble selling iAds. Inclusion in the gallery app can be seen as a value-add for advertisers.

Apple introduced the iAd platform, which CEO Steve Jobs dubbed “mobile ads with emotion,” in April. Initially, iAds were only available to advertisers who planned to spend between $1 million and $10 million, but in February, Apple cut the starting price of iAds to $500,000, according to a report, which noted that fill rates — the portion of advertising inventory being used — fell earlier this year.

In another move designed to make iAds more popular, Apple opened iAd development to third parties with iAd Producer, a tool available on Apple’s Developer Page.

More About: advertising, apple, apps, iads

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What are the upgrades from the first incarnation of the iPad to the iPad 2?  You can probably find that out just by watching the highly suggested keynote that Steve Jobs held a few days ago.  However, if you don’t want to spend an hour and a half on his ramblings about why the iPad 2 is “cool,” “awesome” and “magical,” then you can simply check out this really useful infographic created by Geeks Are Sexy.

Instead of listening to Apple fanboys about how great the new iPad 2 is, you can simply look through this chart of specs and make up your own mind.  It is always best to check out, compare and make these decisions based on the needs and requirements that you set for yourself.  One of the first questions you should ask yourself is, “What are you going to use the tablet for?”  After that comes the task of finding the tablet that suits your needs best.  It’s simple, straight forward and uncomplicated.

Click Image To Enlarge

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What are the upgrades from the first incarnation of the iPad to the iPad 2?  You can probably find that out just by watching the highly suggested keynote that Steve Jobs held a few days ago.  However, if you don’t want to spend an hour and a half on his ramblings about why the iPad 2 is “cool,” “awesome” and “magical,” then you can simply check out this really useful infographic created by Geeks Are Sexy.

Instead of listening to Apple fanboys about how great the new iPad 2 is, you can simply look through this chart of specs and make up your own mind.  It is always best to check out, compare and make these decisions based on the needs and requirements that you set for yourself.  One of the first questions you should ask yourself is, “What are you going to use the tablet for?”  After that comes the task of finding the tablet that suits your needs best.  It’s simple, straight forward and uncomplicated.

Click Image To Enlarge

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Given that the original iPad really hasn’t been out that long yet, and Apple really wants people to get the new version, they’re reportedly offering to refund the price difference to consumers who already purchased the first iPad. 

UK-based ElectricPig, which spoke with the comnpany, reports, "We were assured by Apple’s sales team that Apple would just refund the £100 price difference, without any complicated returns and exchanges, so you can take advantage of the price drop on the original iPad. Good news! The catch is that you’ll need to be within the 14-day returns window, which doesn’t leave much wiggle room for those outside of that window. You’ll also need your receipt."

As usual, Steve Jobs did its fair share of competitor mocking at the big iPad event, implying that the iPad 2 will just completely blow everything else out of the water. We’ll let time and consumer decisions dictate the accuracy of that, but the device hasn’t failed to impress so far. 

The refund thing ought to be huge for bumping up sales of the iPad 2, which will make the numbers look nice. The people who own iPads already are primarily the early adopters, so it stands to reason that a significant amount of them will be game for purchasing the new version of the device. 

There’s no denying that competition in the tablet space is much greater now, however, coming from companies putting out devices running Google’s Android operating system, and Microsoft’s Windows platform, as well as HP webOS devices, and BlackBerry devices from RIM.  

Pricing is a big reason why Android has been able to gain so much momentum in the smartphone market, and as the OS makes its way to more devices, that’s likely to come into play in the tablet market as well. The price reduction for the original iPad should help things for Apple too though. 

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Given that the original iPad really hasn’t been out that long yet, and Apple really wants people to get the new version, they’re reportedly offering to refund the price difference to consumers who already purchased the first iPad. 

UK-based ElectricPig, which spoke with the comnpany, reports, "We were assured by Apple’s sales team that Apple would just refund the £100 price difference, without any complicated returns and exchanges, so you can take advantage of the price drop on the original iPad. Good news! The catch is that you’ll need to be within the 14-day returns window, which doesn’t leave much wiggle room for those outside of that window. You’ll also need your receipt."

As usual, Steve Jobs did its fair share of competitor mocking at the big iPad event, implying that the iPad 2 will just completely blow everything else out of the water. We’ll let time and consumer decisions dictate the accuracy of that, but the device hasn’t failed to impress so far. 

The refund thing ought to be huge for bumping up sales of the iPad 2, which will make the numbers look nice. The people who own iPads already are primarily the early adopters, so it stands to reason that a significant amount of them will be game for purchasing the new version of the device. 

There’s no denying that competition in the tablet space is much greater now, however, coming from companies putting out devices running Google’s Android operating system, and Microsoft’s Windows platform, as well as HP webOS devices, and BlackBerry devices from RIM.  

Pricing is a big reason why Android has been able to gain so much momentum in the smartphone market, and as the OS makes its way to more devices, that’s likely to come into play in the tablet market as well. The price reduction for the original iPad should help things for Apple too though. 

Go to Source

Given that the original iPad really hasn’t been out that long yet, and Apple really wants people to get the new version, they’re reportedly offering to refund the price difference to consumers who already purchased the first iPad. 

UK-based ElectricPig, which spoke with the comnpany, reports, "We were assured by Apple’s sales team that Apple would just refund the £100 price difference, without any complicated returns and exchanges, so you can take advantage of the price drop on the original iPad. Good news! The catch is that you’ll need to be within the 14-day returns window, which doesn’t leave much wiggle room for those outside of that window. You’ll also need your receipt."

As usual, Steve Jobs did its fair share of competitor mocking at the big iPad event, implying that the iPad 2 will just completely blow everything else out of the water. We’ll let time and consumer decisions dictate the accuracy of that, but the device hasn’t failed to impress so far. 

The refund thing ought to be huge for bumping up sales of the iPad 2, which will make the numbers look nice. The people who own iPads already are primarily the early adopters, so it stands to reason that a significant amount of them will be game for purchasing the new version of the device. 

There’s no denying that competition in the tablet space is much greater now, however, coming from companies putting out devices running Google’s Android operating system, and Microsoft’s Windows platform, as well as HP webOS devices, and BlackBerry devices from RIM.  

Pricing is a big reason why Android has been able to gain so much momentum in the smartphone market, and as the OS makes its way to more devices, that’s likely to come into play in the tablet market as well. The price reduction for the original iPad should help things for Apple too though. 

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Today will be remembered as the day the iPad 2 first showed its pretty face. Now the recorded video stream is available, letting you see for yourself as Steve Jobs and his cohorts deliver the news.

Watch the video here.

What else do you think this day will be remembered for?

According to Webtrends, people were commenting more about Steve Jobs than the iPad 2:

More About: apple, iPad 2, keynote, steve jobs, streaming video

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Apple introduced the iPad 2 today, and as CEO Steve Jobs appeared on stage, he said this new model is not a tweaked or marginally improved piece of hardware, but a completely new design.

Under the hood is what Apple calls a “dramatically faster” processor, Apple’s custom-designed 1GHz dual-core A5 chip that uses the same amount of power as its predecessor, the A4, but it’s twice as fast, and Apple says its graphics processing is “up to nine times faster.” Job says that despite that new power, battery life will be the same at 10 hours.

Jobs said the iPad 2 is 33% thinner than the first iPad, and a mere 8.8mm thick (down from 13.4mm of the original iPad) — thinner even than the iPhone 4. It’s also lighter, 1.3 lb as opposed to the 1.5 lb weight of its predecessor. There will be both of front and rear facing cameras on board, with the back camera capable of video recording at 720p at 30 frames per second, and the front camera is a VGA quality camera for videoconferencing.

Along with the new hardware, Apple will offer a $39 HDMI adapter that will allow users to output 1080p video in a mirrored configuration. That will allow users to watch iPad content on an HDTV while still viewing that same content on the iPad’s screen (which is the same as its predecessor at 1024 x 768 pixels).

Ordering starts for the iPad 2 in both white and black on March 11 in the U.S. (March 25 in 26 more countries). It’ll be offered in 16GB, 32GB of 64GB models, either with Wi-Fi or both Wi-Fi and 3G, all for the same prices of the original iPad:

Full iPad 2 specs from Apple here.

Images courtesy Engadget and Macworld

More About: apple, iOS, iPad 2, steve jobs

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Mere weeks after the iPhone 4 came to Verizon, the iPad is arriving as well — or the iPad 2 is, at least, Steve Jobs announced at a press event Wednesday.

The iPad 2 will be carried by both AT&T and Verizon. The device begins shipping in the U.S. on March 11, and in 26 more countries on March 25.

In addition, the iPad 2:

• Is one-third thinner than the first iPad: 8.8mm thick, down from 13.4 mm.
• Is lighter: 1.5 lbs from 1.3 lbs.
• Comes in both black and white.
• Sports a dual-core processor, up to 2x faster CPU. Graphics are up to nine times faster.
• Has both front and rear-facing cameras.
• Comes in six different versions (16GB, 32GB, 64GB, with and without 3G support), priced the same as the corresponding iPad 1 models.
• Has the same battery life as the original iPad.

Apple sold nearly 15 million iPads in 2010, Jobs revealed.

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Apple sold nearly 15 million iPads last year, generating $9.5 billion in revenue in the nine months after its launch, Steve Jobs announced on stage at a press event Wednesday.

Apple previously announced that it sold 3.27 million iPads in the first quarter of sales, and another 4.19 million in the second.

Recent research from eMarketer estimates that consumers will purchase 81.3 million tablets in 2012, up from 15.7 million this year, 34 million of which could be iPads. Gartner estimates that 19.5 million tablets have been purchased this year, and will multiply to 54.8 million in 2011 and more than 208 million by 2014, “driven by sales of the iPad,” the firm claims.

In the U.S., Forrester expects 24 million tablets will be sold, a full 20 million of which will be iPads.

Apple also announced that it has now sold more than 100 million iPhones to date.

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Stacey Delo joins Simon Constable and Lauren Goode on digits to report live from Apple’s iPad 2 event, where Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance.

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