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Few events cause such widespread speculation and exuberance as an Apple product announcement, and the company has scheduled one for tomorrow, March 2. Apple is expected to announce the iPad 2, the first upgrade to its massively popular tablet.

Many of the rumors circulating about the iPad 2 involve the upgrades to the tablet's hardware, which according to a number of reports is expected to be thinner than the current model and therefore lighter as well. It seems a given that the iPad 2 will have at least one camera, something lacking in the first version, and there are several reports that it will have two - a front-facing camera for video, perhaps, and a rear-facing camera for photos. There's also talk that the new iPad will have more memory and a better graphics processor. ReadWriteWeb's live coverage will begin right here at 9 AM PST - we hope you'll join us.

AudioBox.fm, an online streaming service which lets you access your music collection via the cloud, has today released its highly anticipated native iPhone application. With the new app, you can organize your files by playlist, artist, genre or album and stream them directly to your mobile device. You can also scrobble your played tracks over to Last.fm and, on devices running iOS 4.0, you can listen to music in the background while multitasking.

Oh, and it's free.

MP3tunes, which offers cloud storage and playback for your music library, just launched a new initiative called "Buy Anywhere, Listen Everywhere" which highlights how the service's users can buy music from any of the major online music vendors like iTunes, Amazon or Napster and then sync this music wirelessly with any MP3tunes compatible device. MP3tunes currently supports Android phones, iOS devices and a number of Internet-connected radios. According to MP3tunes founder and CEO Michael Robertson, the company wants to ensure that users have the ability to "shop [for their music] at any store and use it with any device."

When Apple purchased the cloud-based music streaming service Lala in December of 2009 and then announced a few months later that it was planning to shut it down, many hoped that this signaled Apple's intentions to launch its own cloud-based version under the iTunes label. And so, a replacement for Lala was on many people's wishlist for announcements they hoped to hear Steve Jobs make today at WWDC.

But unfortunately, Jobs had no such news.

The speculation about Apple launching its own streaming service in place of Lala is fueling the competition for online music services.

Apple acquired Lala last year. The popular service sold songs for 10 cents. The songs streamed in web browsers. Music could not be downloaded for the low priced tracks. Update: Higher priced tracks could be downloaded.

Apple plans to shut down Lala, the cloud-based streaming music service it bought in December 2009. Lala stopped accepting new users today and will close on May 31. Thanks to its unlimited music locker and innovative pricing scheme, Lala had long been a favorite of ours. Rumor is that Apple will revive the service is some form under the iTunes.com label, but as with all things Apple, this is just a rumor until Steve Jobs walks on stage and announces it.

MP3tunes, which was launched by tech entrepreneur Michael Robertson in 2005, allows its users to store their own music in the cloud. Until today, however, the amount of free storage on MP3tunes was limited to a relatively meager 2GB. Now, however, the company has decided to up the ante and plans to give its users 10GB of free storage which can be accessed from virtually anywhere (browser, iPhone, Android, Wii, Playstation, Chumby etc.). MP3tunes already has a backlog of invites, but the company graciously agreed to give 150 of our readers priority access to its expanded music lockers. Read on for more details about how to claim yours.

In last week's poll, we asked if one company will come to dominate cloud computing. We had 115 responses.

Today we posted about the massive data center that Apple is building in Maiden, NC. We know so little about what Apple plans to do with the 500,000 square foot data center. So, we want to ask you: Why is Apple building a massive, 1$ billion data center?

If the rumors are true, then something is afoot in the Apple music camp. According to a recent article in Bloomberg, Apple is in talks to acquire online music service Lala. If a sale is finalized between the two companies, a number of new music monetization models can emerge and with Apple holding the supply chain from devices to players to downloads, a streaming music component may prove devastating to others.

MOG's $5 all-you-can-eat streaming music subscription service has finally launched. Although we interviewed CEO David Hyman in mid October, the music industry has changed considerably in the last two months. Imeem sold to MySpace for a song, and competitor Spotify is rumored to be delaying a United States launch as it refuses to enter North America with a paid-only version. We spoke to MOG CEO David Hyman to find out his thoughts on the industry and why his service is different from his competitors.