City Of Darebin is our local council and they’re running a ‘Love Living Local’ campaign to get residents enthusiastic about their local neighbourhood. Local business, local activities, walking, cycling, public transport .. it keeps us clean and green, fit and healthy. YEAH!

Local is big. We live in a global interconnected world where I can skype a mate in Ireland for nothing, scour the web for any and all detail I want on flatworm mating habits, satisfy my hankering for icelandic folk music and read The Age online when I’ve got a ‘mo. But, I still gotta get the milk, enjoy a weekend cooked breakfast, indulge the local barista. And lo and behold, stretching the legs, moving around and doing these things is good for me!

Local will never die and local activity will never die. Good local businesses will never die. Corollary: APPLEBOX will always have a place. Bring on downloads. Let Quickflix become a mega success. We’ll be part of the mix because local will always be strong.

And so it was über nice to get profiled in the Love Living Local mag that the council distributed to a couple thousand local residents. You can read the full mag here, and here’s our little bit:

Many thanks to Kim Heras of Technation. He’s written a great piece about us. There’s a spot on competitor round up and Kim has really cottoned on well to what we’re doing. Technation is covering startup action here in Australia, which is great because there’s lots of juice once you look around!

Ok .. that’s not our membership (yet) .. it’s the total downloads of Firefox 3 with 4 hours left. Check it out. That’s surely going to break 6 million downloads in a single 24 hour period. Nice work!

UPDATE
Ok .. that didn’t take long. Only an hour later and the 6 mil mark has been broken.

UPDATE
8,290,908 downloads in 24 hours. Not bad!

We love Firefox at APPLEBOX. We use it on our in-store iMacs, and it’s developer features reign supreme when creating next gen web apps such as APPLEBOX. But Firefox 2 is now getting long in the tooth .. Safari has emerged as lean and fast, Opera is also quick, IE7 is even looking ok next to Firefox 2.

Enter stage left .. Firefox 3. It’s finally being released next Tuesday and the Mozilla crew are trying to create a world record for the most software downloads in a single day.

For those of you that jumped the gun and have been playing with the Firefox 3 beta .. you will notice APPLEBOX isn’t quite ready for it. Yep, we do have some some layout issues with FF3 at the mo. But rest assured I’m on the case and will have a release by Monday night that will have us Firefox 3 ready. So go on .. pledge your support for the download world record like we have!

UPDATE
With timezone differences, download day for us Aussies begins Wednesday 3am, actually on the 18th (oops). All the timezone variations are here.

A film that replenishes the soul! Uplifting, unpredictable and just plain fantastic. Guaranteed to please, even the blokes! Whilst I admit I cried throughout.. pretty much the whole film it was because I was either laughing so hard, feeling inspired or devastated. And for the blokes… I promise you, you will like this one too. What a GREAT way to spend a couple of hours.

Marisa’s kitchen (down the road on Station St in Cardimone’s supermarket DELICIOUS preprepared Italian food if you feel lazy!) have been involved in raising money for The Golden Age Community School for a few years now. This is a very grass roots charity and the money goes directly to the school and community whose children attend. It’s a great cause and worthy of support. They are holding an event to raise money with their famous food on offer…

WHEN - Wednesday 18th June, 7.30 - 9.30pm
WHERE - Cardamone FG, 143 Station St, Fairfield
COST - $35 per head (includes food, wine and soft drink)
BOOKINGS - Call Belinda on 9481 0586
(Cheque or cash payments, tax deductible receipts provided)

We have also had a ‘guess how many lollies in the jar?’ competition going on in store to raise money for the crisis in Burma. This is the brainchild of Ellen Lewis and some of her friends at Wesgarth Primary School. It has been going great guns but…. I came into work today and the jar is gone? Anyone know it’s new location?

How many were in there? I have to know!!

Pop your ideas in here for what we will discuss at next movie club and where we should meet… We will finalise and vote on the 17th to give us two weeks to watch the films before the next movie club on Tuesday the 1st of July.

Movie Suggestions

Single Movies
After the Wedding
Stardust
Into the Wild

Movies by the same director
Amelie & City of Lost Children

Venue
I reckon the Cave at The Builders Arms sounds cosy but might be too far for people to go. Will check out Bar Nancy too.

Don’t know how many of you have managed to catch the Aussie film, Boxing Day. It’s just received recognition at the Director’s Finder Series for Directors Guild of America members. First time for an Australian film so well done Kriv Stenders.

Just came across songza .. billed as google but for music. OK me thinks .. lets give this a shot. Type in a song and BOOM! there it is. And now here it is. Funky Drummer:

Cool!

Well tonight kicked off the first of APPLEBOX’s movie clubs. I just quickly wanted to say a big fat public thank you to Sue Maslin who gave us all fascinating stories about the making of Japanese Story and The Road to Nhill, about the role of a producer and about the film industry. I am sure everyone who attended will agree that it was really worth the effort. Stay tuned for more on the night and plans for the future of Movie Club.