The world’s largest domain name registrar, GoDaddy, is no longer accessible in China; according to the Moonlight blog - with not a known reason, but we can speculate that it has to do with something with preventing Chinese people registering Chinese winners’ on the internet.

According to the blog, the sporting authority has banned the issuing of domains to anyone else other than them; with the General Administration of Sport (GAS) providing the China Internet Network Information Centre a list of of the team prior to the opening of the Games, and had registered all of them in Chinese characters and in Pinyin - and those who were already registered by someone else, those owners had to give it as a ‘gift’ to the medalist.

However, the tactic only works when the domain is registered in China. If the domain is registered outside of China, they cannot retrieve the domain.

Internode has announced that it will no longer follow the restrictive rules made by Telstra on their exchanges about the length of the ADSL line in areas where their own ADSL2+ DSLAMs have been installed. It also claims that it will also be able to offer ADSL2+ broadband to those living 7.5km away from an exchange from Telstra.

Under current restrictions, the maximum line length was 4.1km, but under its own rules - it can now reach an area of 176 sq km, instead of 52 sq km.

Internode, however, will only offer it in their dial-tone free NakedExtreme plans, which use the the copper lines without Telstra putting a phone service in the same line - meaning that Internode isn’t subjected to signal interference limits, which are mandatory if a phone service is offered on a copper line.

The NakedExtreme plans will come with its NodePhone VOiP service, which does not have a rental fee, but they charge calls instead of making calls to landlines for free.

The service service will be made available in all states, instead of Tasmania, where the ISP says that there is a lack of affordable connectivity across the Bass Strait for providers. It also should be noted that it is still affected by the speed restrictions if you live far away from your local exchange.

For more information, go to their website. To read the full press release, it’s after the jump (click the Read More link).

Read More >

Internode has undergone a substantial reorganisation of its management team, which sees Simon Hackett no longer being CEO of the company - giving it to former group GM Patrick Tapper. Hackett will still be the founder and managing director.

Tapper joined the South Australian-based internet service provider in 1998, after working with Greater Union, Village Roadshow and EMI.

Another reorganisation includes the creation of CFO, which will be taken by former financial controller Sean Habgood - who has been with the company with four years, two in his previous title. The financial controller role will be given to Bruce Davy.

The company has also announced that they will be looking for a chief information officer (CIO) for the ISP soon.

Queensland is plagued with problems, as another exchange in the state had been knocked out for more than 48 hours.

A Telstra exchange on the Gold Coast has knocked out ADSL services to many of its customers in the South Eastern part of Queensland, and even in Port Adelaide in South Australia and Lesmurdie in Western Australia. While Telstra claims that only 1,000 customers have been impacted, the range of affected areas may suggest that they are many more.

The outage occurred at 9am on Tuesday August 12 due to a software fault; and as of 5pm, some people are still experiencing the outage.

And while they are (or are not) fixing the problem, they have decided to blame Optus for the incident, with its spokesman Peter Taylor saying, “While frustrating for Telstra and the thousand Telstra customers impacted, it’s only a fraction of the headache caused by the regular failure of the Optus network in Queensland.”

The Pirate Bay has been censored in Italy after a decree from one of its deputy public prosecutors; meaning that its IP address and domain name are inaccessible by all the ISPs in Italy. However, The Pirate Bay has already announced several countermeasures.

An insider at an Italian ISP told TorrentFreak that all large-access ISPs have complied with the request to block access to the site; and it is not the only torrent site facing government scrutiny. Just two weeks ago, another torrent site (and the largest Italian torrent site) was shut down - and by the same person who blocked The Pirate Bay - with the IFPI assisting in the case.

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunder has said that they have implemented countermeasures to make sure Italians can access the site - including changing IP addresses and added labaia.org to redirect traffic to the Pirate Bay. labaia.org also means "the bay" in Italian.

Time Warner’s Chief Executive has confirmed that AOL will be split into two starting from next year, according to CNET News.com. Jeff Bewkes has said that AOL will spilt its dial-up internet access and its media units in a release announcing the company’s second-quarter earnings.

The online service and media company saw revenues drop 16 percent to $1.1 billion in Q2 this year; however advertising were up to $8 million, a 2 percent increase - even though ad-revenues on AOL-owned sites were down.

The provider also lost 604,000 subscribers in the second quarter as well - leaving it with 8.1 million subscribers. This comes after it raised fees on its dial-up service in June.

It is rumoured that EarthLink is interested in buying its internet-access business from AOL.

After Carphone Warehouse’s ongoing integration with its purchase of AOL’s broadband business in 2006, it has successfully migrated over 1.3 million of those customers onto its network, leaving 80,000 other customers on the original AOL network because of incompatible hardware or operating system.

In its Q2 update, it also lost 12,000 AOL customers because of the migration; and losing 80,000 more could pile more pressure on its broadband operation - after it had lower its revenue guidance and predicting "broadly flat" sales for its fixed-line service.

A brand new report released by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has showed that its chosen filters could filter illegal content or block peer-to-peer networks, but it failed to identify content shared on the peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

While it showed that ISP filtering technology were improving, the report detailed and highlighted several holes to automatically filter content that is shared over P2P.

The test tested out six products, none are not named, and all were able to block non-web protocol traffic (like instant messaging), all could not filter newsgroups - but only three could block them. The tests were conducted at Telstra’s Broadband eLab by Enex Testlabs.

The table is below (Source: ACMA).

A spokesperson for Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy has said that the department was expected to begin a live test before the end of the year, and will release an expression of interest to ISPs to conduct the test.

You can view the report here.

Tourism Australia is now looking for a brand new web hosting company that will host, support and maintain the Australia.com website for two years. The website was created to promote Australia on the web.

The agency employs 250 employees in 15 offices, and is in charge of convincing tourists to come to Australia; and has been re-developing the website. The new tender will see the contract winner hosting, supporting (including security) and maintaining the new site.

Seven million unique visitors visit the site annually within its eight versions of the site for other languages, including English. Out of the visitors, 80 percent come from the United States, UK and Asia.

All we have to say is - good luck!

Yahoo has now reached a settlement with investor Carl Icahn, who wanted to replace the current board after the company refused to sell all or a part of the company to Microsoft, with Microsoft saying it could not work with the current board.

The settlement will see Icahn, who owns 68.7 million shares (or 4.98% of Yahoo’s common stock), joining the Yahoo board and withdraw his proxy battle. This will also see another board member Robert Kotick not seeking re-election.

Another eight members are facing re-election at the next board members, and the board will expand to 11 members, adding Icahn and two other nominees from Icahn’s proposal.