So remember when people started saying that we would be seeing jetpacks sometime in this century - before everyone realised that it would be the same mundane world as before? Well, turns out, they do actually exist, but not in the way The Jetsons envisioned them to be.

Called the Martin Jetpack, you are basically putting two jet engines (albeit smaller than the jet engines) on your back. For aeroplane lovers: it features a 2.0L V4 2 stroke engine and has two 1.7ft wide rotors made from a composite of carbon and Kevlar. It is reported to fly up to 8000 feet and has a flight time of just 30 minutes while it only measures at 5 ft high, 5.5 ft wide and 5 ft long. There is a drawback - you must be between 140-240 lbs.

It isn't available commercially yet, but after nine prototypes, it will cost around $86,000 (according to Gizmag) - and even that, you have to follow a training course on using the jetpack. However, there is a payment option just like a car - paying a 10 percent deposit and you have to pay off the payments for twelve months before the final payment is due on delivery.

Oh, did we also mention the company is from New Zealand? No? Well, now you know what they have been doing other than playing with sheep.

Doctor Who fans will be able to watch the first episode of the new series, starring the Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith, on ABC's iView service when the clock strikes at midnight on April 16 before it makes its debut two days later on ABC1 - and all this within two weeks of the BBC's debut of the new series.

"View is a fantastic offering, an additional way for Australian audiences to watch ABC TV’s content – generally after, but in this special case before, its television broadcast," Kim Dalton, Director of Television said.

"We hope the lure of Doctor Who – and what a fun and exciting lure it is – will provide incentive for more viewers to discover iView, and experience how convenient and easy-to-use it is."

However, don't get all too excited in seeing the series online before TV, because the subsequent episodes all air after their TV premiere. It returns to the ABC on Sunday 18 April at 7:30PM.

Also announced that Business users will be getting Office 2010 on May 12, and this applies worldwide; while consumers will get it in June. RTM versions of Office 2010, Sharepoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 will be out in April.

According to Digitimes, it will be out in the second half of 2010.

Apple has published a new teaser commercial for the iPad during the Academy Awards today. The new ad basically highlights the features of the new Apple device - including watching a Star Trek film, reading an eBook from the iBooks app and working on documents with iWork.

The iPad is set to launch on April 3 for the Wi-Fi model, while the 3G model will come out later in April. Australian availability for both is also said to be "later in April".

BREAKING NEWS: Wanting to know when the Apple iPad was going to be released? Well, now you have your answer. Apple sent out a press release today announcing that the tablet will be on sale from April 3 for the Wi-Fi models. If you want some 3G connectivity, you will have to wait until later in that month. Pre-orders start on March 12.

If you're in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, you will be getting the Wi-Fi and 3G models "in late April" as well, so no long waiting period between the two models. New Zealand and other territories haven't been announced yet.

Also, hidden in the press release reveals that the iBooks application will not be included in the iPad, and you will have to get it as a download. Don't worry though, because the app is free. It will hit the App Store on the same day as the iPad is launched, and additional countries will be added later in the year.

Full PR is below.

CUPERTINO, Calif., March 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Apple® today announced that its magical and revolutionary iPad will be available in the US on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. In addition, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple's online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

"iPad is something completely new," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We're excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before."

Starting at just $499, iPad lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more. iPad is just 0.5 inches thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds—thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook—and delivers battery life of up to 10 hours.*

iPad's revolutionary Multi-Touch™ interface makes surfing the web an entirely new experience, dramatically more interactive and intimate than on a computer. You can read and send email on iPad's large screen and almost full-size "soft" keyboard or import photos from a Mac®, PC or digital camera, see them organized as albums, and enjoy and share them using iPad's elegant slideshows. iPad makes it easy to watch movies, TV shows and YouTube, all in HD, or flip through the pages of an ebook you downloaded from Apple's new iBookstore while listening to your music collection.

The App Store on iPad lets you wirelessly browse, buy and download new apps from the world's largest app store. iPad includes 12 new innovative apps designed especially for iPad and will run almost all of the more than 150,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®. Developers are already creating exciting new apps designed for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch interface, large screen and high-quality graphics.

The new iBooks app for iPad includes Apple's new iBookstore, the best way to browse, buy and read books on a mobile product. The iBookstore will feature books from the New York Times Best Seller list from both major and independent publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.

The iTunes® Store gives iPad users access to the world's most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over 12 million songs, over 55,000 TV episodes and over 8,500 films including over 2,500 in stunning high definition. All the apps and content you download on iPad from the App Store, iTunes Store and iBookstore will be automatically synced to your iTunes library the next time you connect with your computer.

Pricing & Availability

iPad will be available in Wi-Fi models on April 3 in the US for a suggested retail price of $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available in late April for a suggested retail price of $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB.  iPad will be sold in the US through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple's retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

iPad will be available in both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models in late April in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. International pricing will be announced in April. iPad will ship in additional countries later this year.

The iBooks app for iPad including Apple's iBookstore will be available as a free download from the App Store in the US on April 3, with additional countries added later this year.

*Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.

So, hope you enjoy this little interview.

Editor's Note: The questions were sent before MeeGo's announcement; the answers, however, arrived after the announcement.

Q: Nokia is currently embracing the open source community - like contributing to Linux in terms of Bluetooth. What does Nokia see in open source in helping its development?

Nokia is making significant use of open source software, as well as contributing to the open source community. Our open source approach is key to engaging a broad community – developers, operators, chipset vendors, OEMs etc. We believe that the larger the ecosystem, the greater the innovation and thus the richer the user experience. We also see that the greater the scale, the greater the opportunity for value creation.

Q: After open-sourcing Symbian, what effect - good and bad - have you seen towards the development of the platform?

I think it's a little early to tell, but the Symbian Foundation may have some evidence of interest to share.

As background, Nokia supported this move. The following quote from Peter Ropke, SVP, Devices Research and Development, nicely summarises our positive support for the effort:

“Nokia congratulates the Symbian Foundation on the completion of its platform migration to full open source well ahead of schedule – a significant milestone for the Symbian platform, the Foundation and the entire mobile industry. With this achievement, the world’s most popular smartphone platform is available in its entirety for developers around the world to innovate on and contribute to, enabling new opportunities for engagement and monetisation. For Nokia, this truly open platform environment brings the promise of exciting new user experiences for our Symbian-based smartphones.”

Q: Because of the variety of operating systems found on mobile devices, especially when the iPhone OS has already over a million applications, how hard is it to convince developers to produce applications for Symbian and Maemo?

Forum Nokia has well over four million registered developers and tens of thousands actively developing for our devices on Symbian, Maemo and S40. The Ovi Store now has over one million downloads a day.

Further Ovi Store statistics include:

• Australia is in the top 15 countries in terms of the number of downloads
• New users are up more than 100% month-on-month
• Downloads are up more than 100% month-on-month
• Successful local developers include LookOutMobile, DOJO Media and Oz Mobi, with downloads into the thousands

Q: How many applications does the Ovi Store have, and where do you see it in a year's time?

The total number is not really relevant. What’s relevant is the number of items available for each device in each market. There are well over 5K content items for each of our lead devices.

Q: Currently, Maemo OS 5 is currently on the Nokia N900. Do you expect developers to build more applications and any other devices to use Maemo/MeeGo?

Yes, we have developers creating content now for Ovi Store for the N900. We have previously announced that our next device will launch later this year on MeeGo.

By using Qt, developers can write applications for a wide range of devices and easily deploy them on Maemo today, MeeGo in the future and even other platforms, like Symbian. This saves them time and increases the reach for their applications.

Q: Other touchscreen devices use Windows Mobile, Google Android or the iPhone OS. What does Maemo/MeeGo offer for Nokia, consumers and developers?

The Nokia N900, based on Maemo 5, is aimed at tech­nology enthusiasts and offers the full Internet with no comprise, the ability to multitask and a new user interface including the panorama desktop. In all areas we want to provide the industry leading experience, to this end, we are including market leading experiences, such as a Mozilla based browser, Microsoft Exchange email integration, and our own OVI services.

Maemo is an advanced Linux based computing plat­form. It uses the standard Linux Kernel 2.6 - not a proprietary mobile Linux kernel - and other standard upstream open source components. In developing Maemo, we have worked in and with leading open source projects; in fact, over 80% of Maemo code is comprised of upstream open source software. What we add is our expertise in user experience, user interface, hardware and services integration.

With Maemo 6 merging with Moblin 2 to create MeeGo, this new platform will drive an even wider range of Internet computing and communication experiences for consumers.

MeeGo benefits for developers:

• a large installed base of devices One set of APIs for apps

MeeGo benefits for consumers:

• More apps!
• Same apps with same user experience across a wide range of devices
• Endless innovation on all levels due to openness of software stack

Q: Finally, what do you see Nokia heading in the next five to ten years in terms of development? Does Nokia plan to open source any other technologies?

Nokia is an active participant in the open source community and we're always evaluating opportunities that will help further innovation in the mobile industry.

Microsoft seems to be expanding outside Windows Mobile Phone, and who can blame them? A declining market share and huge rivals like RIM, Apple and Symbian taking over most of its share. Today, all the Android users will be delighted (or not) that Microsoft will be bringing its Tag application to the device.

If you have no idea what Tag is, think of the QR code - but in the Microsoft fashion, it uses a different design of barcodes. The barcodes, unlike the QR code, can also be designed in a pictorial fashion and can have colour. Also, all the data is sent back to Microsoft's servers and it then checks it among its servers before returning a response.

Tag is already available on the iPhone, Windows Phones, Blackberry and Symbian.

Source: Tag Blog

An audit commissioned by Apple on its suppliers has found that three facilities had hired employees that were 15 years old in countries where the minimum age of employment is sixteen; along with eight facilities charging agency recruitment fees in excess of legal limits.

While not named, it is assumed the factories that have failed in Apple's audit were in China, the home of where most of Apple goods are assembled.

Apple also has factories in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic and the United States.

Apple also found that several previous employees were previously hired prior turning sixteen.

The report is pretty damning on its suppliers, with 54 percent of its suppliers locations exceeding Apple's 60 work hours per week and worked more than six consecutive days at least once per month. Also noted was that 37 percent of all facilities failed to respect anti-discrimination laws, while 43 percent of those audited failed Apple's Environment Impact section of its Code of Conduct.

Three facilities were found to have hired non-certified hazardous waste disposal companies to dispose of chemical waste, and ordered them to hire certified ones and to check their wastewater discharge systems.

Also found in the report was that 48 of the 102 facilities audited had underpaid overtime wages; and 24 facilities had paid their employees less than the minimum wage. 57 facilities were found to have underpaid legally required benefits - like sick leave, maternity leave or social insurance for retirement.

Apple, obviously, is not happy with the outcomes of the audit and has made many changes including forcing suppliers to reimburse $2.2 million in recruitment fee overcharges, training programs (train-the-trainer program) for all management staff and, the favourite among many, the threat of termination of employment.

According to Global Post, 62 of the employees have became ill after a report that ran on state-controlled media - 15 more than it was reported - that were exposed to chemicals last summer; with 41 of those affected still being hospitalised, according to a spokesman in Taiwan. The spokesman told Global Post that the newest cases of poisoning emerged through its health testing as symptoms tend to appear months after the initial exposure.

The employees were exposed to a chemical known as hexane, and caused nerve and muscle damage to the exposed workers when they used it to clean touchscreens. Wintek has since stopped using the chemical.

While Apple has made no comment, since they tend to be secretive with its manufacturers, Nokia told the Guardian that they are aware of the allegations and have put in a series of corrective measures.

"We became aware of the allegations regarding the use of n-hexane in July 2009 and started our investigation immediately." The Finnish mobile maker also said that the chemical was not used on its production lines.

"Nokia firmly believes that all employees have the right to ethical and legal treatment. The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees are vital to the success of our business," it added,

While 2009 might not be a year to remember when consumer demand was very low - before increasing at the latter end of the year - Symbian still dominates the smartphone market, according to Gartner. However, it might need to do some more to increase its market share after it dipped from 52.4 percent in 2008 to 46.9 percent in 2009, despite an increase of units sold.

The increase could be because of the increase from Research in Motion (16.6% in 2008, 19.9% in 2009), Apple's iPhone OS (8.2% in 2008, 14.4% in 2009) and the Android OS (0.5% in 2008, 3.9% in 2009). However, Windows Mobile continues to see a decline after having a market share of 8.7 percent in 2009, lower than its 11.8 percent share in 2008.

For mobile phones, Nokia still continues its dominance - despite a lower share of 36.4 percent, down from 38.6 percent in 2008; while Samsung and LG make some big gains - 19.5 percent and 10.1 percent respectively. Motorola and Sony Ericsson saw some losses - with Motorola shedding almost half of its 2008 market share of 8.4 percent to close at 4.8 percent in the year 2009. Sony Ericsson recorded a 4.5 percent share, down from 7.6 percent in 2008.

2010 is a big year, however, for the mobile phone industry. Samsung is expected to bring its Bada OS for its phones, and that could bring some positive increases if the public like it, while Windows Phone 7 Series replaces the Windows Mobile line, so Microsoft could benefit from its reworked OS and new features like Xbox LIVE and Zune integration. Symbian is also launching Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 OS during the year. However, we won't see the final results until next year.

The creator is known to be a freelancer, but while he did not launch the attack it is claimed that Chinese officials had "special access" to the program. The analysts did not go into how did they know about his whereabouts.

This comes after a report that the online attacks came from two educational institutions in China, the Shanghai Jaiotong University and the Lanxiang vocational school. Both schools have denied the reports, and the claims on the latter institution have been mocked within China.

Is this the start of robot domination? South Korea will now be going ahead of having robot teaching assistants, known as the R-Learning, and having them in at least 500 preschools in 2010 at a cost of 1 billion won, and an additional 40 billion won by 2012. By 2013, it would be present in 8000 preschools - so expect robots to be teaching your kids the alphabet (and possibly in binary).

Elementary schools could also be included in this program if it does bring some positive results; and parents will be also allowed to connect to the robots to check on their child's progress and exchange messages. As well, it will be expanding internationally... so guess what Australia, you might be next.

Source: PlasticPals

The Yellow Pages in NZ, Gave a man [Called Josh] a mission... To create the worlds first "Yellow" Tasting Chocolate bar, using only Yellow Pages, Mobile and online. The Chocolate Bar Sold out in aweek... And since then Trademe.co.nz has been BUZZING with auctions... My self listed a a "Yellow" Chocolate Bar... And i never thought it would get to as much as it has... with 30 mins it is at $17... Heres a link if you want to check it out

EDIT: The Chocolate bar was sold for $21! More then i expected!

Sony has brought out the new Cybershot TX5 digital camera, which it touts as a waterproof, shockproof, dust proof and freeze proof while sharing the style and design of the Cybershot brand. The camera features a 10.2 megapixel camera with a 3-inch touchscreen, and has a Exmor R CMOS sensor along with a Carl Zeiss Lens with a 25mm wide angle and 4x zoom.

The camera will also come with the iSweep Panorama mode - making it easy to take a panoramic picture from a 243-degree angle; while it also can record 720p HD video.

The camera will come in silver, black, pink and red and will cost $599. It will be out in April.

The BBC has announced that it will be producing two new applications - one for its News division and another for its Sport website - for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry platforms in a bid to rival other news organisations that offer similar applications.

According to Neowin, the News and Sports apps will be released in April and June respectively; and both applications will heavily use rich content, like video (e.g. live sports games) to the devices. The Sports application will also have a live stream to BBC Radio 5 Live, integration of its 606 Blog, live text commentary and live score updating.

The BBC News application will feature blogs and analysis, along with breaking news along the day. Both applications will also feature some way to submit user-generated content back to HQ. It is unknown if the BBC applications will be accessible outside the UK.

It was also hinted that a BBC iPlayer application is also being planned and will most likely feature another way to catch up on radio and television programmes, along with watching them live as the BBC has made all of its domestic channels up for streaming - for UK audiences only.

Via Neowin. Image from Rory Cellan-Jones (via Twitter).

Despite Google Buzz becoming an abysmal failure, Microsoft has decided to release a plugin for Outlook 2010 Beta that will allow you to view what you and your friends are doing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or on its Sharepoint service (because that is apparently going to bring in social networking features to the workplace). It's pretty much going to tell you what your friends are doing in real time (which has been overused so many times), and there's going to be a gallery to see your upcoming meetings - wow (sarcasm)!!

But why the hell would you want to be social while typing up an e-mail?

Like I said, it is out now for Office 2010 Beta users, but those using Office 2003 and Office 2007 versions of Outlook will be getting it in the near future.

The Department of Internal Affairs continued saying "We [The Department of Internal Affairs] have watched the Australian proposal with interest and have observed the debate that surrounds it."

More information soon.

According to MSFTKitchen, Microsoft has told manufacturers to not install their own user interfaces and keep the original - dubbed "Metro". As well, they have also told manufacturers to not put in any backwards compatibility with the Windows Mobile series - so those apps on the old one, not going to work (and it might be for the greater good).

CNET is also reporting that guidelines imposed by Microsoft include the hardware used - including on the screen size and using the same kind of sensing technology for touchscreens (and I'm guessing all hardware will be touchscreen-based).

If you continue to use it, however, then on June 1; you will still experience that two hour period of using the computer, but your files will not be saved on the hard drive whatsoever, and that you'll get annoying messages from Windows Genuine Activation telling you it isn't genuine.