100 seems our lucky number this month. We’ve been named 51 in the top 100 Smart Companies of Australia, as named by business mag Anthill, and just cracked the top 100 Australian Web startups as named by Technation, coming in at 84.

The Technation rank comes from web stats compiled by Alexa, Compete, Quantcast and Hitwise. I wasn’t sure we’d get into the Technation top 100, because we’re really only generating traffic out of a single suburb in Melbourne. If we get some press (eg from Anthill) we get traffic from all over (which may have caused us to pop up this month), but otherwise we’re a little different from other web startups in that we’re ‘hyper-local’. If you’re not renting discs in Fairfield, we ain’t much use to you!

What interests me is seeing our Hitwise score (which is not published publicly). This is purely Aussie traffic and more relevant to us, and reorded by Hitwise we slide up to #53. Nice one Fairfield people! Of interest in our Alexa stats, it says we get on average 7.1 minutes per day spent by people on our site. That’s great. By comparison, Bigpondmovies gets 3.4 mins/day, Quickflix 4.3 mins/day, Redbubble 5.5 mins/day, so to trump us we need to go to the mighty Facebook for 25.4 mins/day.

It’ll all change tomorrow of course …

Following up Whether or Which .. consumer behaviour does change! It takes education, and a product that people want to change for .. but of course it happens. I’ve just checked our waiting orders. We don’t open until 11am, but we’ve already got reservations for 10 discs in the queue. One was made at 10.15 last night (after we closed so the order kicks in for today), and the rest were made from 7am through to 8.30am this morning. These guys have booked their nights viewing before they kicked off the work day. Gotta love that.

Seth Godin is a permanent fixture in my feed reeder. I love his posts .. short and to the point. Always clear and concise. Whether or Which is one of his latest that just hits the spot for us. He reminds us to be clear on whether our pitch is “designed to get someone to buy any product in the category … vs. buying your product instead of the competition … “

Of course we’re pitching for people to buy our product instead of the competition .. to stop going to the local Video Ezy, and start coming to us. It’s actually a tougher gig than I thought. Video Ezy has spent the last 15 years becoming the dominant player in our industry. Over that time, behaviour becomes ingrained, routine established, comfort zones defined. We’ve popped up and are asking people to change.

For those looking for an alternative, and who can already see how broken the traditional video store is, they jump ship immediately and love us. But a lot of VE customers don’t see how broken VE really is, *until* they step into APPLEBOX, and for the first time in 15 years experience something new. They’re the people we need to mobilise, and it takes some careful thought on how to get to them.

So a new customer tonight told me she heard about us at a dinner at a friends house, one of the guests composed a song on the spot that everyone else joined in on… it was a ditty about APPLEBOX! She assumed it was about apples and was apparently the only one at the gathering not yet in the know. Come out come out where ever you are - we wanna hear that song!

Went to a gig last night at the Wesley Anne to see our Andrew play with The Road to Kilkahlia. Fantastic band, one to look out for most definitely and how proud was mother hen to see Andrew… such talent. I can highly recommend the Wesley Anne as a venue and for their two for one meals on Monday nights too!

Ok .. this might spell trouble for me .. but Mara’s on imdb, Sarah’s also on imdb. Andy’s just made the grade and gets his 6/8 thing on with his band My Lil Tornado on iTunes. Way to go Andy! But Sheeiit … I’ve got a demo tape somewhere I swear it … wonder if iTunes takes demos?

Ok that doesn’t really make sense .. but we made posi 51 in the Anthill Smart 100! Almost in the top 50 .. we’ll keep an eye out to see who we can knee-cap for next year. It was a fun night at Life Labs in Digital Harbour. The event was last Thursday and I’m a bit late blogging about it .. I had hoped to give you a run down on who made the top 10, but I lost my pre-release Anthill mag somewhere in between that glass of red and more beer.

Needless to say .. we’re all stoked here at team APPLEBOX. Well done Sare, Mara and Andrew! We were in esteemed company .. the top spot went to a team that has pioneered early detection of breast cancer through hair analysis (ok ok .. maybe we should have been #2 then).

I had to check another of the top 10, Cone-head, ’cause I couldn’t believe Dan Aykroyd was in the house .. nope .. Cone-head is a new-style shock-absorbent liner for bike helmets. Clearly the health and safety angle was a winner so I think our new APPLEBOX angle is reduction of VE shock. Yes, Video Ezy shock. A coma-like induced state that some experience when visiting their local Video Ezy. Disorientation from endless wandering, flouro-induced memory loss, hearing tinnitus from blaring DVD-loops and a general bad-interior-design-101 induced psychosis. Very horrible and I’m pleased to announce we at APPLEBOX have discovered a cure.

Well done Anthill for putting on the show & congrats also to Colmar Brunton who did the analysis and came up with the rankings. If I had a wee little crit for the night it would be that we weren’t given any info on what the smarts of the top 10 were. As the winners shook hands a two liner on what they did would have been welcome .. we had to hit the mag later and speak to others to work out exactly what they did.

When we get hold of the next edition of Anthill we’ll bring it into the shop for all to see!

Yep .. I’m a Blu-ray fan. If you’ve got a HD flat panel and you haven’t sprung for a player .. you’re missing out. The colours are natural, the sounds clean and clear, the full 1080 picture crisp. Regular DVDs upscale ok, but I still need my HD fix. Who’s Blu-ray for? Everyone! not just the action & effects crew. Scenic movies retain their cinematic quality (Australia, Assassination of Jesse James, Flags of Our Fathers, Iwo Jima ..), dramas play out beautifully .. but it’s the old stuff I like. Bullitt, The Getaway, 2001 A Space Odyssey, The Deer Hunter, even the old Superman 1&2. These movies are specifically remastered for Blu-ray release and the results are superb. The colours are true, the image fantastic. The special features also kick in with plenty of background info on these old classics. Old school. Get into it.

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