Rumors that Apple is going to shove a camera in the next version of the giant iPod, the iPad, gained some traction this week.

Jobs' Mob started advertising for a performance and quality-assurance engineer for the “iPad Media” division and the job requires an expert to test still, video and audio capture and playback. Yep, it is a web cam for video conferencing.

“Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines,” the posting reads.

Apple is in panic mode after early indications were that the great unwashed was not going to swallow its iPad marketing. When the gear turned out to be an overpriced netbook without a keyboad, only the most religious fanboys appeared interested.

The iPad’s lack of a camera is apparently near the top of critics’ lists of complaints about Apple’s new device. That and the daft price.