I’ve just come across Australia’s first contribution to blognation.com. You can read it here: State of the nation: Australia. I can’t find much info about blognation and it’s goals but it looks like a blog network with contributions grouped to the different nations of the world. From the icon list, we have Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Russia, USA, and the UK represented so far. To see Australian content, you go to: au.blognation.com. It’s all in English - China, Russia, France - no native tongue here. That works for me, because I can read it, but in France might that reduce readership? Plus there’s no real bio’s on the authors so David Feng posting to China Blognation could be living in St Kilda, Victoria for all I know (and how did he assume his role?). But, the content should, and will always speak for itself. The focus looks to be definitely tech and web.

All this works for me! Especially Chris Saad’s opening post for us Aussies. I AM interested in web/tech activity, especially in the startup arena. I would love to see a focus on the Australian space - I skim Techcrunch and Read/WriteWeb more and more these days, as most of the content is focused on the US. With a market that has matured considerably in the last 3 years, multi million dollar valuations, funding rounds, buyouts and so on are the norm. This is far removed from my world of a boostrapped business in an environment that still feels 10 years behind what I read is happening over there.

So, a blog with a mandate to focus on the Australian space is great. Congrats to Chris Saad (founder of Particls) for stepping up and taking that on. I’m subscribed and ready to read.

Nice to see Telstra and Quickflix redesign their sites and finally get some JavaScript skills on board. Good web sites engage their audience. Basic animations like sliding a strip of covers to the left or right are fun to use! There’s no page-refresh wait and we get an instant response to our actions. The page is just more engaging.

Telstra look to have turfed their skinned version of Webflicks (licenced via VNH systems) - good, because this had completely stagnated. I wonder if their new effort is internally developed? Who knows. It’s a bit slow, and still completely inconsistent with their downloads business, but hey - progress is being made. Good to see they are using prototype for their JavaScript library. Quickflix have gone with Yahoo. Both are good, solid choices. I use my own library, augmented with the DomAPI. The DomAPI was way ahead of it’s time years ago, but prototype, dojo, yui have now caught up and have a huge amount of momentum behind them. At some point I’ll consider swapping DomApi out for one of the others, but for the moment I’ve got all the GUI richness you can poke a stick at - sliding cover strips, resizing cover art, buttons that actually depress, tabs .. you name it.

Nice also to see Telstra have stretched their UI to 990px wide - hello Quickflix? Still at 800 - news flash, the majority of displays are 1024 wide these days - use it! APPLEBOX of course can go full screen width: 800, 1024, 1440, 1660 - you name it.

The bar is being raised. ezydvd.com.au suddenly looks sooo first generation. Massive traffic, but there comes a time when you have just gotta move with the times ….

A while back, Quickflix announced a partnership with Woolworths and then Harvey Norman. I wrote about it here. I finally had a quick squiz at their on-line efforts. Seems a bit confused to me, there’s bigwmovies.com.au which just redirects to Quickflix (I mean - huh? didn’t I just click on a big W link??) and there’s bigwmovierentals.com.au which does take us to a Big W branded signup page … but click through on any link and you get the quickflix store again.

Dunno - but if I was Big W seems to me I’d want a complete Big W skin with a ‘powered by Quickflix’ logo where appropriate. Although, as previous efforts with The Age and the SMH folded, perhaps Quickfix are once bitten twice shy. Why go to all that effort if it’ll end up going nowhere? I’ll be interested to see how it all pans out. So far, there doesn’t seem to have been any pickup in their traffic: Alexa traffic graph for quickflix.

Haa .. Sunday just gone was HOT, damn hot for October. The evening was beautiful, balmy and it just worked perfectly for Kelly’s idea to throw a birthday dinner for Daz … outside the shop! Daz is the J2EE man who put together the model driven architecture of APPLEBOX and so some alfresco dinning was a great idea … and great for me ’cause at the moment I’m wedded to this shop 7 nights a week.

It was great! Fully catered by Micheal of Bean Counter - the salmon pie was the stand out by far. Mike you’re a champ! (sorry we didn’t leave you any cake!!). A couple wandered in thinking this is some way cool DVD store, and were looking for a place to perch and have a drink! It seems Kelly was right about turning this joint into a bar. Oh well - perhaps the next store can be some crazy blend of eat-drink-movie.

And so how old is the boy? Sorry Daz (he’s the one on the right) - but it’s now on public record - 39!!!

Not sure if it’s clarity really - but at least a moment where I can sit and think yes - I’m happy with my lot. Perhaps it was sitting in the warm afternoon sun with one of barista Ben’s freshly made coffee’s, the savoury muffin or the time-out from entering yet another movie into the system. There is a sense of accomplishment having got APPLEBOX up and running .. I now understand why most business ideas fail outright - not because of the idea itself, but because of all the points of failure that must be passed each and every step of the way.

It’s a helluva effort to navigate through these, and having the right help is essential. Not that APPLEBOX is a dead cert … yet. There’s a heap of hard work ahead, and having been in the store now 7 days a week for 6 weeks straight (Susan picks up the morning shifts so I’m not dead on my feet yet), I think I’ve done what I can from behind the counter. It’s been great being the face of my own business, but it’s almost time to get back to the software and begin taking it to the next level (and fix a few bugs!). My sis Sarah took a long planned 6 week break after getting us to our opening, so she’ll be ready to kick on when she gets back.

It’s all good!

Ok - time to dip a toe into the Blu-ray pond! I’ve had a few requests from PS3 owners for anything Blu-ray, so here you go: Bridge to Terabithia, Spider-man 3, 300, Casino Royale, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Hellboy (The Director’s Cut). That should get us started!

There’s new movies continually coming in (just check the ‘Coming Soon’ list) but another popular request has been Doctor Who (with David Tennant). Done! I have a monthly spend I put through a buying group that supports independent video stores (like me), but when I go to a mass merchant and browse past isle after isle of retail product it’s sooooooooo tempting to just buy. Hey - an ad-hoc purchase here and there never killed anyone!

And don’t forget, if you can’t see something you want - just ask. I’ll put in on back-order for ya

Tomorrow is the Station Street festival. It’s focus is north of the train lines - so here on the southside we’ll kick back and do our own thing. I’m putting on a FREE sausage sizzle, and will drop a speaker out the front door. So if you feel like a feed pop on by - I’d love to say hi!

Had a great busy stretch tonight - hopefully a sign of things to come! Word is still getting out and plenty of new faces are coming through. I’ve never been good at remembering names, but by some miracle of transformation I’m finding I’m not doing so bad! Quite enjoying being Mr. Shopkeep actually.

Coming off this burst I’ve just had oysters and champagne! Don’t ask how or why - but if you ever get a landlord as good as I have, you’ll be doing very well indeed.

There’s no TV and DVD loop in my store! What you’ll hear is Morcheeba, Massive Attack, James Brown, Coltrane, Evis Costello, The Beastie Boys (Instrumental), A bit of Quincy Jones, Lou Donaldson and a heap of old-school boogaloo masters. At the moment there’s quite a bit of Miles - thanks to Grover! What a champ, Grover brought in his Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way sessions for me to wile away the hours with.

I’ve listened to Miles from his early tentative pairing with Charlier Parker in the mid 40’s, through to Relaxin’, Steamin’, Workin’, Cookin’, Kind of Blue. But I sorta followed Coltrane from then on and missed In a Slient Way and Bitches Brew. So many thanks Grover - I’m catching up on some essential material I shoulda’ covered years ago

Yep, I’m making my wireless network available for free! Bean Counter across the road is now an official APPLEBOX hotspot, so you want free wireless in Fairfield? … grab your laptop, latte, brownie (or whatever chocolate delight you fancy) and set yourself up on a table.

BUT you’ll have to pop into the shop so I can show you how to get on. The network is closed (SSID not on broadcast in tech speak), just so I can manage the process in these early days.