Thanks for joining The Geekly Update for our liveblog of Apple’s Media Event. Please bare with is as it would appear that due to high volumes of traffic the site supplying the live-blog software has shot it. Al sources suffering. Sorry.

Ok so lets do this the old fashioned way (courtesy of IGN, TUAW and Engadget, refresh like you’ve never refreshed before!):

6:02 pm: Steve Jobs is on Stage amongst a flurry of applause saying that the new product will be “truly magical”

6:06 pm: “Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.”

6:10 pm: Apple is now bridging the gap between a smartphone and a laptop with their latest product, the iPad. A large tablet screen with app icons and what seems to be a regular desktop background.

6:12 pm: The iPad can browse the web, Jobs says “the best web experience you’ve ever had” and “way better than a laptop.” The iPad can be tilted and turned however you like.

6:13 pm: The iPad also has a built-in calendar, Google maps, contact list, photo browser, specialized version of iTunes store.

6:14 pm: Jobs is now doing a live demo of the iPad! Function switching is smooth. Web browsing is fast and seamless.

6:18 pm: Very, very simple. Time magazine being demos, sports, right in the palm of your hands. So that is browsing the web. Now E-Mail.

6:20 pm: Steve is showing off the improved e-mail browser. Can look at the metro in paris…As an example of PDF display. All the attachment support now being demo’ed Sounds like the E-mail support is going to be absolutely rocking.

6:21 pm: Next, the keyboard. Can look at everything in portrait and landscape. Can look at any photo. Steve is *totally* getting into the portrait/landscape thing. Metadata from maps tied into photos. Can get events, places, at the same time. All tied into maps.

6:23 pm: If this is how the event is being started there is going to be some serious wows in a bit!

6:25 pm: Events, Faces, and places. Shows a big map with pins in it. Tap and hold on the pin and see all the photos there. Tap on it to open the photos. There are built-in slideshows, so yo can bring up slideshow options and pick your transition. Just starts playing music and then flips through the images.(via Macworld)

6:27 pm: Let’s go to youtube. Let me show you a high def video on youtube.

6:28 pm: This interface is interesting, because unlike the iPhone, it’s got panes and floating windows and lots of stuff that you can do when you’ve got a bunch of screen space

6:29 pm: Getting back to the hardware a little bit. It’s realllly thin. 1/2 inch thin. Just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook. 9.7 IPS display. Super high quality display. Best multitouch sensors in the world, married to our great display.

6:32 pm: “What is the battery life like? We’ve been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life. I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time. And it has over a month of standby time.” Wow 10 hours video and a month on standby!

6:33 pm: 16-64 GB of flash storage.

6:34 pm: App Store huge success, 18 monts old, billions of apps, 140k apps. We built the iPad to run virtually all these apps out of the box. Pixel for pixel accuracy and also, automatically full screen via pixel doubling.

6:39 pm: App Store huge success, 18 monts old, billions of apps, 140k apps. We built the iPad to run virtually all these apps out of the box. Pixel for pixel accuracy and also, automatically full screen via pixel doubling. New SDK out TODAY!

6:41 pm: Games, games and more games and now for the NY Times

6:42 pm: “So Steve showed you the Times website, it’s beautiful. Why did we come out here to develop a new app for the iPad? Our iPhone app has been downloaded 3m times. We wanted to create something special for the iPad.”

6:46 pm: Anybody want to buy a MacBook, I’m SOLD!

6:49 pm: More games this time NFS Shift:

6:52 pm: Apple Store is still up nothing shipping today then. My guess, March.

6:53 pm: Who doesn’t love a good picture of Steve

6:54 pm: “Isn’t that awesome? These guys only had two weeks. So we’ve seen some really great apps. Let me show you another… one of our apps. That’s an ebook reader. Now Amazon has done a great job of pioneering this… we’re going to stand on their shoulders for this. Our new app is called iBooks.”

6:58 pm: Pricing looks pretty good and you can change the font od any book to whatever you want within iBooks.

7:00 pm: And now, the new iWord suite for the iPad, something completely new. some stuff about spreadsheet, the interface looks really really nice and slick to use.

7:04 pm: Showing access to photo albums, etc. How easy it is to drag things around whereever you want. Demoing resizing handles. Want to match sizes? tap the other one while resizing. Nice!

7:05 pm: And now for the important part of iWork on the iPad, Pages, Apple’s version of Word.

7:11 pm: Customisable keyboards seem to be a big feature for the iPad making text entry easier for each individual user.

7:12 pm: So, the price of each iWork App will be $9.99 each, an absolute steal considering the price of normal office suites.

7: 13 pm: Onto connectivity, the iPad syncs over USB just like an iPhone or iPod

7:14 pm: Two data pricing plans announced for the US
1. 250mb/month for $14.99
2. Unlimited data/month for $29.99

No contract, you can cancel at any time.

7:17 pm: International deals coming in June. All iPads are completely unlocked and they use new GSM microSIMs. Essentially you buy yourself an iPad then you can activate a 3G data plan whenever you want with no contract.

7:18 pm: The Biggie… PRICE

7:20 pm: Steve comments on pundits talking about $999. but no $499!!!!!!!!!!!!

7:21 pm: WiFi model ships in 60 days and 3G enabled devices in 90 days

7: 22 pm: and now… accessories (this is relentless (sorry Amanda)). A keyboard dock! Sweet.

7:34 pm: Anyone NOT getting one of these at $499???

7: 35 pm: Thats it ladies and gents, event over. Leave your comments below and let us know what you think about the new device. If you want to watch the entire video for yourself to see the device in action make sure to check out Apple’s website in a couple of hours for the video in its entirety. For now, thank you for coming along and my apologies for the technical hiccup causing this rather primitive narrative of the event.

7:37 pm: Video is already on the Apple site. Watch away.