It's the new and improved iPad and it sports 4G support for increased data speeds worldwide! Well, not if you're in Australia. Australia's 4G network runs on a different frequency band than what the new iPad supports. So you can't technically get 4G in Australia, even if you do have the new iPad.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has taken Apple to court over misleading advertising, due to the fact that the iPad doesn't operate on the 4G LTE bands that are used in Australia. "The ACCC alleges that Apple's recent promotion of the new 'iPad with WiFi + 4G' is misleading because it represents to Australian consumers that the product "iPad with WiFi + 4G" can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia, when this is not the case," it says.

Apple has now extended the offer to all Australian buyers of the new iPad to collect a refund if they feel they have been mislead by the advertising. This may only be the start of 4G problems for Apple. The iPad is compatible with US and Canadian 4G networks, but many European networks are planning 4G networks which fall outside the supported bands.

The US Army shows no signs in stopping its demand for robots, even in the 10-year old conflict. The two new robots that the Army are currently testing will join the over 2,000 robots that are already employed by the Army for bomb disposal, classified ops, and for security checkpoints. Boston Dynamics, creator of the cool BigDog bot and others, is the creator for these two new robots.

Both were developed with funding from the Army's Rapid Equipping Force. They are now undergoing testing at the Army Test and Evaluation Command to pass safety and reliability assessments. The first type is the RHex which is a six-legged, 30-pound crawling bot inspired by cockroaches. It wiggles around through mud, streams, and rocky terrain, going up to six hours on a battery charge. The bot can be controlled by remote up to 650 yards away and can manage stairs, slopes, and even swim underwater.

The Sand Flea is the other bot being developed, and it is capable of jumping up to 30 feet into the air. It weighs 11 pounds and is able to jump 25 times on a single charge of its carbon dioxide bottle. This allows it to jump over walls or onto roofs of buildings. In flight, it's able to stay stable due to a gyro stabilization system.

AMD has released the new AMD Catalyst 12.3 driver today for download. It's mainly a support upgrade where is features full support for Windows 7 64-bit/32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit/32-bit for the 7000 series. Windows XP support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series will be made available in AMD Catalyst 12.4

Additionally, the drivers have fixed the following issues:

• AMD Catalyst Control Center startup issues/delays have been resolved

Personally, I'm getting a little sick of the 3D trend that is visible everywhere. I mean, 3D printers, movies, and game consoles, it's all starting to become a bit ridiculous. Finally, there's a piece of 3D that I can get behind. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have recently discovered that a 3D inspired solar panel could produce 20 times more energy than its traditional flat brethren.

Traditional solar panels lay on a roof facing the sun to produce energy. MIT researchers decided to test the hypothesis set forth by 13-year-old Adiean Dywer. He hypothesized that a design based on trees would produce more energy. His testing failed, but MIT's didn't. MIT tried various 3D shapes such as a cube, tall cube, and tower to see which produced the most energy. All three outpaced the traditional panel and the accordion-style tower drew in 20 times more power per square foot.

"I think this concept could become an important part of the future of photovoltaics," said Jeffrey Grossman, one of the project leaders. The accordion-style worked so well because it could absorb energy from all angles. It also reduces the foot print of the installation by standing vertically. While MIT is confident with the tower design, they haven't figured out the best distribution for them yet. Since one tower may shade another, they are best used in a urban environment...at least for now.

A report was released last fall that claimed using a single repeating digit was a stronger pin code for your iPhone than using unique digits. All bets are off, however, when you are dealing with Micro Systemation, a Swedish security firm that helps police and military around the world crack digital security systems.

Just last week, the company released a video showing just how simple it is to crack an iPhone or Android device that is password protected. The video, which you can see below, documents a process where the company spokesperson uses an application called XRY and accesses the contents of the mobile phone in less than two minutes.

Immediately, all user information becomes available. This information includes GPS location, call history, contacts, and messages. The software doesn't use a flaw put there by the manufacturer. Instead it uses a brute-force method to try all of the combinations to guess the correct password. It's more akin to jailbreaking than hacking.

In the words of Nelson from The Simpsons - "HA HA". What a great start to this news, as much as I love Apple (I'm rocking along with the new iPad and I've been loving it so far, there are issues, but it's overall a nice product) the 4G iPad is a huge misleading mess in Australia. When I went down to grab mine, you could see 4G signs and talk of it around the store, and it's just simply pathetic.

Apple are now finding themselves in a pickle in Australia, where Australian consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has accused Apple of misleadingly calling its new iPad as 4G-capable. The ACCC have said they will be applying to the Federal Court of Melbourne for an order against the company and is moving for the court to impose fines and injunctions against sales.

The ACCC is saying that labelling the new iPad as 4G-capable is misleading to customers in Australia. Yes, 4G LTE networks are available here in Australia, but they run on an entirely different band to what the iPad is compatible with. 4G services in Australia provided by Telstra run on the 1800MHz frequency band, which makes them completely unusable on the new iPad. The new iPad only works on the 700MHz or 2100MHz frequency bands for its 4G LTE connectivity.

Samsung's 5.3-inch GALAXY Note smartphone has been doing surprisingly well for the South Korean-based company, having shipped over 5 million units in just five months. This is quite the achievement considering its one of the larger screened smartphones on the market today.

5 million units shipped, and the 5.3-incher doesn't even include Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, this is quite the achievement for Samsung. We should expect Samsung to released their Premium Suite of apps, as well as Android 4.0 in the near future.

Until then, the GALAXY Note is still an amazing looking phone. I personally wouldn't mind checking it out, but I'm waiting for some Ice Cream Sandwich lovin' before I get into that gorgeous 5.3-inch display. I really should stop dilly dallying and just get one, shouldn't I?

People are spending up big on Apple's Newsstand app, where a study of Apple's App Store for iPad during just the month of February from market research firm Distimo shows that the top 100 publications raked in more than $70,000 a day. This is just absolutely huge, considering that the revenue is from the United States alone, and is led by News Corp.'s The Daily, followed by The New York Times, and The New Yorker magazine.

Apple don't disclose what individual app makers and content providers earn on ints store, but Apple provide 70-percent of each sale to the content creators, holding back 30-percent for themselves. Publishers can also let existing subscribers view digital editions of content, to which they've already subscribed to. But, they're not allowed to link to outside Web sites where subscriptions can be struck outside of Apple's App Store, that's a naughty no-no.

Some noteworthy metrics from the study:

According to 'Gibbo' on the Overclockers.co.uk forums, we should expect the new NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670Ti and GEFORCE GTX 670 to launch late-April, or early-May. These two GPUs will be placed into price segments aimed at AMD's Radeon range of GPUs.

The GTX 670Ti will replace NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580, and take on the HD 7950 3GB. The GTX 670 on the other hand, replaces the GTX 570 and should be slightly faster, too. The GTX 560Ti and 560 are not expected to be replaced with 600-series GPUs until much later into 2012.

The low-end 520/550 cards will reportedly be rebranded into the 600-series, where we should expect the usual same card, re-boxed as 600-series GPUs. Gibbo also mentions the dual-GPU NVIDIA beast, which we should expect to arrive as the GEFORCE GTX 690, and "can be released when NVIDIA desire to do so". The roadmap that Gibbo is coming from says that the GTX 680 is the fastest single-GPU card, but a faster single-GPU card is expected later this year.

An experimentation through EVE Online will allow players to trade in-game currency for real-life gear, such as an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560. Players can use 20 PLEX (Pilot License Extension, an in-game item that gamers can earn and use to pay for monthly subscriptions for EVE Online) to purchase a GeForce GTX 560.

PLEX can be purchased using in-game currency called Interstellar Kredits, and can be traded amongst players. A single PLEX is equivalent to 500 million Interstellar Kredits, which can be purchased for roughly $10 in real-life money. This means 20 PLEX is roughly equal to $200, slightly less than what a decent GTX 560 retails for. But, for a game like EVE Online, how long would it take you to build up 500 million Kredits in order to purchase a single PLEX?

A long time. Any hardcore EVE Online player might have built up a bunch of Kredits, but for newbies, it might take a while. But instead of grinding away for nothing - a GeForce GTX 560 as a light at the end of a tunnel is a goal many cash-strapped gamers would love. At the moment, the deal will be initially limited to just 100 GPUs, one card per account, to test the market. Just as this news was hitting the Internet, the value of a single PLEX went up, substantially.