Microsoft and Google are the best-known providers of web-accessible applications, with projects such as Google Apps. Unlike their efforts, iCloud attempts to recreate the look and feel of a full-fledged operating system running in a browser, including a desktop, application icons, widgets and applications running simultaneously in separate windows.

If you take a look at iCloud and you’re familiar with Microsoft Windows, you’re sure to see some similarities. The user interface is very XP-like, although there’s an optional sidebar that’s Vista-esque. Applications are fairly limited — you’ll see a basic Write app and a Mail app, for example, as well as a bunch of games and such. Call me crazy, but if I was creating a “web OS,” I’d look to put desktop applications in it that aren’t readily available as web applications. There’s already a number of online document editors that are accessible in a browser and most mail applications are also available through a URL.

Here are some screen shots of iCloud:

This is the login screen, looks good, but takes a little bit of time to load. The icloud environment lives entirely in a browser window, but replicates many familiar things from the desktop–including files, applications, and the sidebar. Among the dozen or so programs that Xcerion has built is a program for creating presentations, seen here. Xcerion has its own application development engine that is built into icloud itself, allowing developers and hobbyists to write their own programs that can then be hosted by Xcerion and sold to customers in a model similar to the way Apple plans to sell iPhone applications. Xcerion would host the applications and then take a cut of the sale, though it plans to take 10 percent, rather than the 30 percent cut Apple takes in the iPhone business. The overall packege looks great, but it has a really bad drawback… It does not support FireFox 3.0!!  See the image below!