If you go to me.com on your iPad or iPhone you'll a screen with options to Install Find my iPhone and Gallery, and then a second category labeled as "Requires Paid Subscription", which includes Set up Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Install iDisk.

That's a little confusing since if you tap the iTunes link, you're taken to the App Store which promptly informs you Find my iPhone indeed still requires a paid subscription to MobileMe (or the 60-day free trial). Likewise, MobileMe Gallery still requires a member name and password on launch.

So why put Find my iPhone and Gallery above the pay warning? Why put iDisk below it? Poor design, cheap attempt to get people to download and the push the subscription service, or unintentional glimpse of potentially free aspects of MobileMe to come?

Check out the screen and let me know what you think.

[Thanks Paul for the tip!]

As was widely expected, Apple's MobileMe web apps -- me.com -- are back online after their scheduled maintenance, and sporting an updated look and some new features.

The new Mail has come out of beta and now everyone can enjoy server-side rules, which is terrific if way overdue. In the not-so-terrific pile, previously you could instantly switch between apps using a conventional menu bar. Now you have to figure out that clicking the cloud icon top left will bring up and icon bar which you can then click to switch tasks. Less discoverability and efficiency in one update? Not very Apple.

(They've standardized on the iPhone app icons to represent Me.com tasks, however, which is good. And they look great.)

Are you trying to new Me.com? What do you think?

UPDATE: Apple's MobileMe email announcement, after the break.

Service Update: New MobileMe Mail, Find My iPhone, and more.

Today we're making available to all MobileMe members an all-new Mail web application, a Find My iPhone app, and a new way to navigate between applications at me.com. Read on for details.

All-new Mail at me.com

MobileMe Mail on the web (now out of beta) has been completely redesigned with powerful new features such as widescreen view for reading email with less scrolling, rules to keep your email organized everywhere, and faster performance. For more details on these and other new Mail features, please read this news post.

Find My iPhone app and more

You can now download the free Find My iPhone app, enabling you to locate a misplaced device directly from iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch while on the go. After installing it from the App Store, just launch the app and sign in to quickly locate your devices on a map and access the other Find My iPhone features — Display a Message or Play a Sound, Remote Lock, and Remote Wipe.*

The Find My iPhone web application on me.com has also been updated with a full-screen map view. Clicking your missing device on the map lets you access all the Find My iPhone actions to help you recover your device and protect the information on it.

Learn more about improvements to Find My iPhone here.

New way to get around me.com

We've also given me.com a new look and a new way to navigate between applications. Simply click the cloud icon in the upper left of the page, and choose from Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk, and Find My iPhone. To access account information, help, or to sign out, just click your name on the top right.

We recommend accessing me.com with Safari 5, Firefox 3.6 or later, or Internet Explorer 8. If you have questions about this update, please read this FAQ.

We hope you enjoy these improvements to MobileMe. Thank you for being a MobileMe member.

Sincerely,

The MobileMe Team

*Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe are not available in all countries.

Apple has changed MobileMe's me.com site, previously inaccessible from iPhone or iPod touch Safari, to not only allow access to Find My iPhone, but to offer help in setting up accounts and getting additional apps. iTunes Preview, meanwhile, has duplicated even more of the media and app browsing experience on the web by adding support for categories.

First up, when you used to go to http://www.me.com on your iPhone, you used to see an intercept page telling you to set up the services on your iPhone and that was it. Now the new page (above) has a link to setting up those services, a direct link to Find my iPhone, and links for getting Apple's free Gallery and iDisk App Store apps.

Obviously, Find My iPhone from an iPhone or iPod touch (or iPad, as we presume that's what Apple is setting all this up for) is the Big News here. The link itself is a bit clunky still and the Find My iPhone page hasn't been optimized for the iPhone, but having it available online and mobile is huge.

Next, TUAW shows how Apple has once again expanded iTunes Preview -- the web browser-based front for the iTunes store -- adding full on category pages to the previous app and music rollout. Another piece in the rumored iTunes.com cloud-based puzzle?

Let us know what you think of these changes!

[Thanks Jason for the tip!]

UPDATE: Enable your iPhone via Settings > Email > Mobile > Find my iPhone. Then go to me.com, login to your Account tab, and choose Find My iPhone from the sidebar. Voila! Thanks to everyone who sent this in. Screen grab after the break!

ORIGINAL: Apple just announced via their MobileMe News "blog" that:

Find My iPhone can be found at me.com today, but you also need iPhone OS 3.0 (available on June 17) installed on your iPhone to use the feature.

You can learn more about Find My iPhone by visiting What's New for MobileMe.

We don't see it yet, but if you're a developer already rocking 3.0 and MobileMe, hit http://www.me.com and let us know if/how it works for you!

Apple's brand new MobileMe News (formerly MobileMe Updates) is back with their second post this week (and luckily for links, finally sporting unique URLs to boot!). The subject of their latest post? How previous .Mac users can keep using their @mac.com addresses on the iPhone post-MobileMe transition:

If you want to use your mac.com address instead of me.com for the MobileMe address on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can simply remove the me.com account (if you've already created one) and then add a new MobileMe account entering username@mac.com for the email address. Any contacts, calendars, and bookmarks you are syncing will re-appear on your phone. It can take several seconds to minutes to update your phone depending on how much data you have and your network connection speed. If possible, it is best to do this when you are on a wi-fi connection for the fastest response.

Easy enough? Well, there is one small little restriction: the above only works if you originally had an @mac.com address prior to July 9, 2008. After the MobileMe transition, no new @mac.com addresses were generated, leaving those new to the... er... new service with @me.com as the only option.

Personally, I'm not sure what to do with my account yet. Me.com seems a little too precious for everyday use, while @mac.com hits too many fanboy cords for comfort. Can we get custom domains for email as well as websites? What's your preference?

During the 2008 WWDC Keynote today, Apple VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, confirmed the rumors of a .Mac maga-revamp in the form of MobileMe.

Apple's answer both to previous critiques of the admittedly out-dated .Mac service, and the expected cloud computing boom (see Android, Google), MobileMe features ActiveSync-like "push" email, calendar, and contacts syncing between your iPhone (or iPod Touch) and your Mac or PC, or via any web browser with some pretty spectacular looking Web 2.0/AJAX style online apps. It also adds photo syncing, clearly targeting consumers.

iDisk (the online storage service) gets a bump to 20GB, and goes fully online as well. Mac user? Still enjoy the Mac sync, iWeb, and Back-to-my-Mac that you know (and I) love.

Launching in July in time for the new iPhone 3G, and priced at the same $99 as .Mac, it still smacks the expensive, but if your don't have Exchange, and value highly polished syncing and web-based solutions, this might just be the service for you.

Existing .Mac customers will be rolled into MobileMe -- see Apple's migration page for details -- with a choice of maintaining their old @mac.com address, or the new @.me equivalent.

For more, go to me.com (which will redirect you to Apple.com/MobileMe), where a handy-dandy MobileMe guided tour awaits!

Yesterday came word that the name Apple might be using to rebrand .Mac was "Mobile Me", and amid the pitchforks, torches, and angry villagers storming the internet pipes to Cupertino, we figured our readers could easily come up with a better name, and sweetened the pot with $50 worth of gift card incentive to prove it.

Daring Fireball's John Gruber had previously mentioned that iMobile might be an alternative, though his readers felt it could too easily be mistaken for immobile, probably not the poetry Steve Jobs is shooting for.

Now Gruber, and his handy crowd-source at Twitter bring word that just plain old "Me", surfaced as me.com, could be a candidate as well, and had mysteriously changed ownership just today.

Make of that what you will (and I will continue to make fun, for the same reasons mentioned in the first post). And don't forget to enter our contest. Pick a better name than "Mobile Me", and if the blog staff likes your name best, the $50 gift certificate is yours! [We'll compile the guesses from this and from our previous post. The Gift Card is for the Phone different Accessory store. Deadline: 4EST on Monday June 2nd].

[From Dieter: I dislike this whole "me" thing for several reasons. First, it smacks of a 1990's, by-committee branding that sounds hip and clever but is actually staid and out-of-touch. Very Un-Apple. Second: If Apple somehow manages to make this brand hip and the "Me" does make people feel like they have ownership and identity with the brand ("Me.com really is about ME. Gosh, it's like it's my very own internet service,") then they'll be faced with an impossible task: not screwing that up. Think about how unhappy you are with .Mac's reliability and speed. Now imagine if that service weren't called ".Mac" but instead "Me." People will become disenamoured very quickly. Now we can obviously assume that this whole Me.com thing will have better reliability -- but if Apple really is looking for a straight-out, bald-faced "this is Me on the internet" branding, then even the tiniest failure in the system is going to make people super pissed -- it would go from "Aw crap, .Mac sucks again" to "Me.com is down again. Apple broke ME". Not good.

Thirdly: Windows ME. 'nuff said.]