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Mar 12

Latest News Stack

Latest News Stack

Hi All,

It has been far, far too long since I’ve communicated with you all but there is some exciting news I’ve been waiting to be able to share with you for a while now and I finally can announce the launch of a new, free, service to be offered exclusively to Australian Macintosh User Groups – the “Disc of the Month”

Over the last half year or so, I’ve been developing “Discs of the Month” for AUSOM Incorporated. It started off as a single, once only project, putting together a collection of Card Games for them to sell at their meetings but I enjoyed doing it so much and sales were extremely positive so it very quickly grew to nearly a dozen discs, including a massive DVD collection released in December.

Details about some of the titles I produced for AUSOM can be found on their website;

and two of the movies used to promote the Discs during AUSOM’s Main Meeting can be downloaded at;

[61MB, Duration: 1:57]

[32MB, Duration 2:18]

Now, I’m pleased to announce that as of January 2008 (for sale in February), I will be generating and releasing “generic” versions of all future “Disc of the Month” releases that ALL Australian Macintosh User Groups will be able to download and then burn their own “branded” copies for sale to your members.

By “generic” I mean the Disc names won’t include a club name nor will the marketing material. They’ll be plain vanilla style that can be used by any MUG.

However, a minimum of 5 Megabytes will be left on each Disc for clubs to place their own marketing material on it.. eg a “About XYZ MUG” PDF or folder… in fact there is an “empty” 5MB file that will be included on the Disc Image, that you’ll need to delete (and remember to empty the trash) and replace with your own “about us” documents. By doing this, we guarantee the space and indicate where the icon for your documents should appear.

[Please note that the discs created for AUSOM will NOT be released for general MUG usage, as they tend to have AUSOM branding throughout the marketing material and on the discs themselves… But they’ll give you an idea of the type of Discs to expect in the future.]

What will be supplied

The following will be bundled together in to a ZIP archive, approx 800MB to 1GB in size, for each Disc Release;

  • An “Uncompressed” .DMG file ready for you to Mount, copy your “About Us” material onto and then burn using something like Toast or Disk Utility.
  • A marketing PDF that be printed off for a catalogue to go on your “sales counter”; included in your Magazine; posted to your website etc (and this PDF will also be on the Disc itself)
  • A QuickTime Movie at 1024×768 promoting the Disc… it is intended to be included in a Keynote presentation for you to market the Disc at your meetings
  • A PDF file containing a “Disc Label” that can be used to print directly on to Blank CDs or DVDs using many popular Inkjet printers or sticky labels.

These will be downloadable by a SINGLE authourised representative from each MUG and they will require a password to access the files.

What are the conditions

As they say there is no such thing as a free lunch, so yes there will be some terms and conditions regarding the use of these materials, but they aren’t onerous;

  • First and foremost, you may NOT modify ANY the material supplied, except to add your “About Us” document or folder to the Disc.
  • You may not delete content from the Disc nor add anything extra (except for the “About Us” documents).
  • In the future, we may ask that you display, in your Magazine and/or on your website, a small (probably 1/4 or 1/2 page) advertisement acknowledging the company that is hosting the initial archive download each month.

What Disc titles can be expected

Have a look at the ones already produced for AUSOM and that’ll give you an idea… I expect to release a couple of different Games, a couple of Applications/Utilities and a couple of “Resource” style discs etc.

There are three discs already under development for release in the new year, starting in February;

“Festive Fun Volume 02”
Expanding upon the original Festive Fun, there will be more Christmas related Fonts, ClipArt, Music Activities and more tons of other stuff.

“Celebrations Galore”
Will be similar in concept to the Festive Fun Discs, but will feature resources like Fonts & Clip Art etc for celebrations and holidays like Valentines Day, Easter, New Years, Halloween, Graduations and so on.

“Publishing House”
This will be the first Disc released in 2008 and will include various applications to allow you to turn your Mac into a Publishing House and produce your own CD/DVD labels, Flyers, Banners, Envelopes, Business cards and lots more… see the attached PDF for the promo flyer. Also the CD Label is attached and the promo movie can be downloaded as a 5.6MB ZIP archive

[Once you get the movie and play it, it’ll automatically go in to full screen mode and you’ll need to press the space bar for it to start playing]

There will normally be a single Disc released each month, but occasionally there may be some bonus Discs covering special events or products.

If you have suggestion on topics for Discs that could released, please let me know.

Promotion of the Discs

As you can see there will be plenty of promotional material supplied for you to do your own promotion directly to your members…

You can use the PDF flyer to post to your website, or publish in your magazine

The Movie can be posted to your website and incorporated into your Monthly Presentation Keynotes/presentations.

If you can print directly to CDs, then the Disc itself will help promote itself.

Also, there will be a couple of new opportunities for promoting the Discs nationally, which will direct people to contact their local MUG to purchase a copy… more on this in a future email.

RRP of the Discs

Based on the research and experience of AUSOM, the Recommended Retail Price that will be promoted for the Discs will normally be AU$10 for CDs and AU$15 for DVDs. These prices include GST.

I know many will say that as DVDs can have almost five times the amount of data, and as such they should command a far greater selling price but experience shows that people hesitate at spending $20 for a Disc, but readily hand over $10 (or multiple $10 for multiple Discs) and they seem to accept $15 better than $20… If you have different experiences, let me know.

Registering your MUGs Interest

If you think your MUG would be interested in downloading A SINGLE COPY the Disc of the Month archive each month, for you to duplicate on to CD (or occasionally DVD) for resale to your members, could you please REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE (ie with the same subject line) and answer these questions;

MUG Name:
Website URL:
Do you have a PRINTED magazine: Yes/No
Do you have an ELECTRONIC (eg PDF or HTML) newsletter: Yes/No
Do you have access to a Printer capable of printing directly to CD/DVD: Yes/No

[These two questions will help me plan release schedules of discs]

Do you normally have a meeting in January?
Do you normally have a meeting in December?

[These questions are totally OPTIONAL]

How many copies of the Discs would you expect to sell each month: Under 10; 10-20; 20-50; 50+
Do you already produce your own Disc of the Months: Yes/No

BTW: If you group is NOT interested in the MUG Disc of the Month offer, I’d also be interested to here from you to find out why this won’t work for your group.

I look forward to hearing from you all soon.

One Response to “Disc of the Month for Australian MUGs”

  1. Disc of the Month Launched | AppleUsers.org Says:

    […] For a reminder about the Disc of the Month the original announcement can be found at https://www.appleusers.org/news/dotm/disc-of-the-month-for-australian-mugs/. […]