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Bryce Durbin is a graphic designer and illustrator for TechCrunch. He grew up in Columbus, OH and now lives in Elkader, Iowa with his wife Shannon and their son Link. His portfolio is at brycedurbin.com. ? Learn More In-browser web design app, Easel, has just launched. The WYSIWYG web design tool aims to make web design and development easier for teams who want to quickly get their ideas online without having to hire a designer. Easel founders Ben Ogle and Matt Colyer first met while working as engineers at Adroll, and have been working on the Y Combinator-backed design tool for about four months. The most important features are speed and collaboration. Documents can be edited by multiple users in real time and changes are automatically synchronized like with Google Docs. From a designer’s perspective, I think the app is a great resource for people who don’t have any coding experience but know what they want visually. And building collaborative tools into web design is a great idea. ...

Why is the cloud so hard to make funny? Do a search on YouTube. You will see songs about the cloud based upon Joni Mitchell and Vanilla Ice songs. “Cloud, Cloud Maybe.” Groan. Thank goodness for The Onion. Finally, the cloud is funny. The cloud is not supposed to be funny. How can you be funny about a bunch of servers? Elasticity? That’s not funny. There are some decent attempts. One Microsoft spoof on VMware is funny but not Onion kind of funny. It features Tad, the sales guy from VMlimited. And then there is the cloud consultant. He has no credentials but lots of friends who are social media experts. You can get a bit of a laugh about Hitler learning about a security issue. But the Hitler spoofs are numerous on YouTube so it doesn’t have quite the edge. Most of the cloud videos are so awful that they become funny in their own cringing way. Microsoft’s “To the Cloud,” campaign ranks high in that category. I did some checking to find other videos by The Onion about the cloud. I could...