Over 1600 seats will be available daily from October 2012.

Ranking among the world’s top 12 cities for overall quality of living, New Zealand beats Australia hands down, according to a new international survey.

Mercer’s 2010 Worldwide Quality of Living Survey revealed while Auckland again was among the world’s top five cities, holding steady at 4th position on par with Vancouver, Sydney remained at 10th place.

Mainly thanks to giant server farms - and their voracious cooling requirements - the computer industry is responsible for around 2.5% of the world's carbon emissions, according to IDC - putting it on a par with the airline industry.

Auckland-based disaster recovery and backup provider Plan-b was a big winner at the fourth VMware virtualisation forum held in Sydney this week.

Plan-b won the business continuity award for excellence in promoting business continuity through the use of VMware technology.

Plan-b technical director Symon Thurlow told NBR at the conference in Sydney yesterday he was delighted with the award. Mr Thurlow said Plan-b used VMware’s technology as a foundation platform on which it had built its own application.

The infringement notices the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft issued iiNet were referred to police by the internet provider.

iiNet is currently embroiled in a complex case of alleged copyright breaches in Sydney, which could have implications for the global film and music industry and especially New Zealand as we have similar copyright legislation to Australia.