Oh, let's not beat around the bush. Apple is poised to announce the iPad 2 on March 2nd, 2011. The tech giant's marketing department has been firing off invitations to select outlets, including our very own, for an event scheduled for 10:00 AM at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. As you'll see in the promotional art blasted our way, Apple is making it plain that it is indeed announcing a second-generation iPad on the heels of numerous rumors indicating that it would.

Not too subtle, eh? That's why I'm biting the bullet here and avoiding "safe words" like probably, presumably, and all that jazz.

One thing we're definitely not sure of is what will be included in the new iPad. An on-board camera and a potentially even a SD slot seem like a safe bet, but there's a lot of speculation over the processor, screen, and potential mystery ports. Some people are suggesting it'll boast a Retina Display and a beastly dual-core SGX543 GPU, but we won 't know for sure until March 2nd. We'll be there, of course, and we hope you'll join us for a week of insane coverage both at GDC and now at this Apple event.

Earlier this month we somewhat predictably announced we will be at GDC 2011 in San Francisco. Since then, we've been receiving a monsoon of meeting requests which has made my usual disaster of an inbox into… something far less manageable. I'm fairly caught up with existing meeting requests, and our schedule is getting pretty packed. However, since we're bringing the entire TouchArcade crew to San Francisco, I still have tons of availability to cram even more meetings in.

For the sake of simplicity, and avoiding the lag in between emails, if you'd like to book a meeting with us please sent me an IM via AOL Instant Messenger. My screen name is ioburn [Status: ]. If you don't have an AIM account, signing up is easy and only takes a second. Alternatively, AIM even connected to Facebook and Google Talk, if you would rather use that. Of course you can also email at tips@toucharcade.com, it just won't be anywhere near as fast. (Be sure to put "GDC 2011" somewhere in the subject for email filters.)

Don't forget our party that we're having on Wednesday night either! We'll be at Bin 55 which is the bar in the hotel lobby of the Marriott near Moscone. If you track down someone from TouchArcade, we'll be giving out fancy little tyvek TouchArcade bracelets which will allow you to gain access to free beer and drinks from 8:00 PM until last call, which I think is sometime around 11:00 PM!

I can't wait to see everyone there! This GDC is working up to be even more crazy than the last.