Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Their goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere! The non-profit company Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local SFD events to impact their own communities.

Software Freedom Day for 2010 will be held on Saturday, September 18 and registration for teams wishing to participate has opened. But if your team would like access to SFD giveaways, get in quick as only registrations received within the next 10 days will be eligible. Continue reading »

Recently we have been updating our list of active Apple User Groups in Australia as we’ve seen one group fold, another start up and a few whose details had changed and we thought this would be an opportune time to seek any other active Apple User Groups that may wish to be included in our listings. Continue reading »

In recent times, there has been much publicity for charities and fundraisers for overseas disasters and the like. This got us thinking about how the team here at AppleUsers.org could assist others less fortunate than ourselves, but it was felt that we’d rather support a “local” charity, so we set out a few criteria to help us decide which organization we’d like to help promote.

Some of the criteria we used to help us select an appropriate group, included (in no particular order):

• Ideally be a national based organisation (as our readership is national, and our own team is currently spread across at least three states)
• Provides services to the Youth of Australia
• Preferably have some relevance to technology

and one group immediately sprung to mind — The Smith Family! Continue reading »

Our Community and Westpac are undertaking a search to find Australia’s Kookaburras – the loud and proud stirrers – the community groups, the people and the projects that changed our communities for the better.

They can be a little loud, a bit raucous,
sometimes slightly unpleasant on the ear.
But as a country we would be devastated without them.
They’re distinctive. They’re iconic. They’re impossible to ignore.
They’re our Kookaburras.

The 2010 Kookaburra Awards will offer prizes to individuals, groups and projects that really made a difference – that stretch people’s vision of what’s possible in Australia’s society today.

At times, we might think of these people as ratbags, or cranks, or worse.
We call them radical, or subversive, or infuriatingly single-minded. But we can’t deny that they made a difference in the world. Nominate now for a 2010 Kookaburra Award! Continue reading »

Over the Easter 2010 break, AppleUsers.org bought forward a planned migration to a new internet hosting provider by nearly two weeks, due to unforeseen difficulties with the old server.

While we had a few minor hiccups due to the suddenness of the move, the transition has actually gone reasonably well. The main issue was waiting for various ISP’s DNS servers to update with the changes to our DNS records.

We don’t believe any mail has has been lost during the switch over, but if you have sent any mail between April 1st and April 4th ADST and you have not received a reply from us, please resend the email.

If you see this message on the AppleUsers.org website, then you are now seeing the new AppleUsers.org server and any email you send us should reach us.

We wish to take this opportunity to thank Ben May over at our new web hosts, Alyte, for his assistance late Good Friday evening and throughout Easter Saturday helping us make this transition go much more smoothly than expected.

The Australian Government has committed $15 million over three years (2008-2011) to provide free access to computers, broadband services and training to seniors by creating approximately 2,000 senior internet kiosks nation-wide. These kiosk services will be delivered nationally through local community organisations or in any suitable public place that services seniors, which would include many Australian Apple User Groups. Continue reading »

Volunteer Grants 2010 recognises the valuable work of Australia’s volunteers and is part of the Government’s ongoing commitment to supporting volunteers, assisting disadvantaged communities and encouraging social inclusion to assist vulnerable people within our society. Funding of $21 million is available to eligible non-profit community organisations to assist their volunteers and encourage volunteering. Continue reading »

Chuck Joiner, of The MUG Center, joins Christopher Breen on the Macworld Podcast #191 to discuss the state of Mac User Groups. Continue reading »

As part of our program to make the AppleUsers Spotlight more readily accessible to a wider audience, you can now follow all the latest news from AppleUsers.org on Facebook and Twitter. Continue reading »

CreativeTech have announced their “Winter 2010″ calender of free online classes, along with a series of downloadable flyers for you to spread the news with your friends and colleagues. Continue reading »

The Australian Broadband Survey, run by Whirlpool.net.au, is now open, so consumers can once again have their say about the state of broadband in Australia.

AppleUsers.org recommends all users of broadband in Australia spends the ten or so minutes required to complete the survey. Continue reading »

MacTheMag, the new venture by Matthew Powell, former editor of Australian Macworld, recently launched the digital magazine portion of the project. Continue reading »

[/caption]Software Freedom Day 2009 will be held on Saturday September 19th – It is a celebration of free and open source software and the community behind it.

This FREE event is held “simultaneously” around the world and will showcase the best that the free and open source software (FOSS) community has to offer, including live demonstrations of; Continue reading »

The Australian Government, through the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) have $21 million available for the Volunteer Grants 2009 scheme and Australian Apple User Groups should be eligible to apply. Continue reading »