According to members, aaNet will host a BBQ

The email sent to their customers:

As an aaNet customer, you have been exclusively invited to attend one of aaNet’s community BBQ’s. The BBQ’s provide an ideal opportunity to meet other aaNet customers and members of the aaNet team. We want to bring ‘community’ back to aaNet and we’re hoping the BBQ’s will be a step in the right direction. All you need to do is turn up! And we’ll do the rest!

The plan on the day

The aaNet BBQ’s are fully catered with juicy BBQ food, refreshing drinks and great company! On the day there will be competitions and prizes, and we have the much awaited aaNet polo shirts which we promised some of you a long time ago!

Bring your family, your picnic rug and your favourite BBQ games and we’ll make sure you have a great time!

Don’t delay, register today!

An exploit, according to Gizmodo, has been found in Adobe’s software that can be used to download free copies of movies and television shows from Amazon’s Video on Demand service (and other services as well).

In tests using the Replay Media Catcher, Reuters successfully downloaded the movies that utilised software from Adobe to deliver media, including Amazon – though they say that their shows and movies cannot be pirated using the software. It seems that the “security feature” was dropped in order to increase download speeds. That feature allowed protection between the software and its players.

Hong Kong readers might actually be gleeful, as they will have the iPhone sold unlocked, meaning that they can use their current carrier to use the phone. They will be selling it for HK$ 5,400 (AU$841.10) for the 8GB, and HK$6,200 (AU$965.72) for the 16GB models.

Weirdly enough, there is already a carrier carrying the phone there – Hutchison (also known as 3) has sold the phone since July; but also, to complete the activation – you will be able to do it over iTunes. But if you are from mainland China, you will be out of luck – this only affects Hong Kong.

Lets see if they expand this to many more territories.

China may soon run out of internet IPv4 addresses, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre. They say that under the current allocation speed, they have only 830 days left until they have no more addresses if no action is taken by then – meaning anyone thinking of getting on to the internet 27 months (or 2 years and 3 months) later will not get any internet access.

However, the director in charge of controlling the IP addresses, Li Kai, has said that they will upgrade to the new IPv6 – which only some ISPs have done so far (like Internode), but this has only been used among educational websites in China. To actually use the new protocol, operators would need to spend a lot of time and money to upgrade, while still having IPv4 on until all of the internet switches to IPv6.

So operators: apply for the remaining IP addresses NOW!!!

MySpace is set to launch its new music service, which allows you to buy music from the site, among other things, tonight to everyone – in the U.S. of course.

Following Hulu, another News Corporation property with NBC Universal, it has been locked down to only U.S. users only.

While the site redesign will also affect international users, most of the content will not be there, like listening to the wide catalogue being offered from the major labels. This means that if a U.S. user adds any music from their profile from MySpace, those from international IP address will not be able to listen to it – unless its part of their existing catalogue of music, which is much smaller than what the U.S. will be getting.

But don’t worry – they will be negotiating international licensing deals on a country-by-country basis “soon”. Like that is ever going to happen.

A new amendment bill introduced in the Senate by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy will see, if it passes, all analogue broadcasts to be switched off – giving a firm timetable for the switchover to digital television. Australia previously had that all broadcasters must switch off their analogue systems either on March 31 or December 31 next year.

The new law will allow an extension of four years. Also, the new law will allow the Communications Minister the power to permit licence areas to convert to digital prior the end of all analogue broadcasts – with the allowance for a six-month period for the conversion to occur, allowing some areas to become digital-only before the cut-off date.

Now, we need to see if they would bring community television to digital as well – it would be nice to see community-based shows on television again.

Anime fans are rejoicing after today’s announcements. After talking about Hulu’s announcement on anime, Joost has now decided to release an onslaught of new anime titles.

The new anime shows include the original Japanese versions (with English subtitles) of Naruto and Death Note (same as Hulu); the subtitled and dubbed versions of Ikki Tousen, Gun Frontier and Saiyuki; the subtitled versions of Izumo; and the dubbed versions of Astro Boy, Avatar, Blue Dragon, Cosmo Warrior Zero, Mär and Samurai Jack. They also plan to launch more anime titles.

While I am certain that this will work in the US, we haven’t tried it here in Australia – but we will let you know what happens there. At the time of writing, none of the content is up yet.

Is this the beginning where the studios are realising that putting their content online to combat privacy? If so, then our networks need to pick up their game.

While we did report on the launch of several features and new shows on Hulu, we have now know that both Death Note and Naruto will not be getting the dubbed versions – because of license rights, etc. However, as a compromise – both shows will air as their original Japanese broadcast, with subtitles.

However, while they are still trying to work to get the dubbed version – many fans are happy that they can now watch the subtitled versions legally, since many animation studios (mainly those who dubbed them) don’t really like them doing that.

Remember when Q&A, that show on the ABC, discussed about video game ratings – well, they have now apologised for their poor discussion over the topic, especially when host Tony Jones said that video games had no classification system, unlike DVDs and Videos.

“The ABC apologises for the information provided by presenter Tony Jones in the middle of the discussion on gaming and agrees that it may have been confusing and misleading,”  the ABC wrote in an email from the complainant, who then sent it to Kotaku.

“Mr Jones was aware that a rating system exists for games. He had been briefed on concerns that the current system is inadequate because it does not provide an R rating. But regrettably in the pressure of the program and in attempting to summarise and point to the lack of a comprehensive rating system, Mr Jones erred by stating that there was no ratings system for video games."

The ABC has posted this response on its website, since the show is available online – even though the show aired in July.

In the course of the discussion some of the comments were confusing and Tony Jones in summarising the controversy said "There’s a rating system on videos but there’s no rating system on video games." What he meant of course was that there is no comprehensive classification system which includes an "R" 18+ rating for games, such as exists for videos, movies etc. For more information have a look at the Classification (Publication, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995.

The Google Android OS has been released, and here is the first phone that will be using it - the T-Mobile G1. Announced at a press conference in New York, it is set to launch on October 22 for US$179 on a two-year contract, or US$399 contract-free. Existing customers will be getting it first, before giving it out to new customers.

However, those in the UK will get this phone in “early November”; and the phone will also launch in Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands in the first quarter of 2009, all under T-Mobile.

It will feature WiFi and 3G support, a 3 megapixel camera, and support for the Android Market and Amazon’s MP3 store - similar to the iPhone’s iTunes Music Store App and the Apps Store. Full specs below:

• WiFi, HSDPA 1700/2100 and quadband EDGE connections
• 3D graphics acceleration
• 1GB on-board storage, with microSD support
• 3-megapixel camera, but cannot record video.
• Android Market (apps store) and Amazon MP3 app (music store)
• All of Google services; including push Gmail support
• Google Maps with Street View
• Full HTML client
• Bluetooth (no A2DP)
• No Microsoft Exchange support
• No desktop sync