Drupal.geek.nz Bevan on drupal, usability, web, open source, tech...

The New Zealand Government loves Drupal:

I'm going to be in Auckland this Friday and am meeting up with some other Drupalers to drink, dine and talk Drupal. Please see my post on groups.drupal.org for more details and to let us know if you're coming.

The NZ SSC has rejected Microsoft's offers for a new licensing contract. This is a big loss for Microsoft (Though I'm sure MS would have you believe otherwise and try to paint the picture back to front) and big win for NZ Government and NZ's IT industry.

Together with some friends and colleagues we have been working hard to organise, finalize and publish details of what will be the two most important days for Drupal in New Zealand:

DrupalSouth: The New Zealand Drupal Event for 2008

DrupalSouth is the New Zealand Drupal Event for 2008. DrupalSouth will bring NZ's Drupal community together for the first nation-wide Drupal event and the first ever Drupal camp in NZ.

Due to high rank in google search results for queries about unlocked iPhone upgrades to v2 firmware and my recent article about my own experiences. A number of people in Christchurch have contacted me about unlocking their first-generation iPhones that have become locked after upgrading. This is not my trade, and is not something I would consider myself a professional in. However I am confident enough to do this without bricking (rendering it permanently useless) the phone.

While I'd prefer to help others to do it themselves, I understand this is too much to learn or too overwhelming for many people. If you would like me to unlock your iPhone, please contact me. These are my terms;

Mozilla has finally announced Firefox 3's launch date; this Tuesday 17 June. (Note that's probably US time, so it will be Wednesday in NZ).

Mozilla wants to break a guiness world record for number of downloads in one day and I'm sure they'll achieve it. You can go pledge on spreadfirefox.com (A drupal site): http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord

I created a "FF3 launch party" event in Christchurch for kicks on mozillaparty.com: http://mozillaparty.com/en-US/events/view/101

I think we get some free gear if enough people come or something.

On a road Trip to the West Coast (New Zealand), we found the merchandise, prices and marketing rather peculiar. This store had a particular broad but limited range of products and services:

While the petrol in Ikamatua seemed just a little over-priced:

This article about SilverStripe "giving away their product" completely misses the point of open source. I think that like most of the general public here in NZ (perhaps worldwide?), the author understands that "open source is free" (like free beer), but misses the point that SilverStripe's software, and open source in general, is not free because it costs nothing, but because the code that is written to create the software, is open for anyone to use, look at, modify, enhance, learn from, redistribute, sell, print out and use as toilet paper, or glorify in a nice picture frame above their mantlepiece. Because the code has been freed from the restrictions typical of commercial software licensing.

Online retailers BWMsnow and SKATEgear require the professional services of a Drupal vendor or developer to take over the maintenance and future development their websites.

BWMsnow is NZ's largest online retailer of snowboard gear and has been operating for more than 4 years internationally, focussing more heavily on the NZ market in recent years. BWMsnow was NZ's only online retailer of snowboard gear until recently. BWMsnow is a NZ limited company which continues to grows significantly every selling season (March to June).