MacTalk Australia

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MacTalk Australia
MacTalk Australia logo
Image:MacTalk.png
MacTalk Forum Main Page
URL http://www.mactalk.com.au/
Type of site Apple discussion forum
Registration Free
Owner MacTalk Australia.
Created by Matt Kelsh & Anthony Agius
Launched January 1 2004

MacTalk Australia, formerly AppleTalk Australia, is a forum dedicated to discussion among Apple product users or potential users, with an Australian slant.

Contents

[edit] History

AppleTalk Australia was started on January 1, 2004 after two users of Overclockers Australia, Matt "Disko" Kelsh and Anthony "decryption" Agius banded together to create an Apple forum for Australian users. The name AppleTalk was a pun on Apple's own networking product, AppleTalk. The original intent of the site was a small forum with a target user base of around 70 members [1] however the site completely exceeded this expectations, growing exponentially, resulting in a current user base passing the 10,000 mark in 2007. Pre-MacTalk magazine, the site ran entirely through voluntary effort and donations (of items for review and hosting, as well as money). Banner ads were originally given in exchange for products to review. Post-magazine the site charges for banner ads, as well as having Google Adsense ads on all forum pages for unregistered viewers.

[edit] Awards

From July 2004 to June 2005 AppleTalk Australia was ranked #9 in the Hitwise Australia 'News and Media - IT Media' industry based on number of visits.[2]
From October to December, 2005, AppleTalk Australia was ranked #8 in the Hitwise Australia 'News and Media - IT Media' industry based on number of visits.[3].

[edit] Domain and Name

The site was originally registered at appletalk.ma.cx but was switched to appletalkaustralia.com on 8 January, 2004 [4] with the old URL being phased out soon after. [5] After the (previous) owners of a well known Apple online reseller in Australia, ePowerMac, agreed to sponsor a .com.au domain purchase, the site moved to appletalk.com.au. In late 2006, to avoid any potential future trademark issues with the intended commercial release of a magazine, the site was renamed ""MacTalk Australia"".

[edit] Forum software

The forum originally ran on Invision Power Board 1.3 with a highly customised skin, created by the_argon. Due to the heavy customisation, an upgrade of the software was fraught with great difficulty and indefinitely put off, but in April 2006 was rebuilt around Invision Power Board version 2.1.4 after the site was hacked. However, due to changes in IPB updates breaking the customised skin, the board was not updated and as a result was hacked once again in October 2006. Rather than rebuild around IPB again, the admins decided to rebuild the skin around VBulletin, this time not using a wrapper, but entirely using the theme engine built in. The adapted skin was built by iSlayer over a week long period while the forums were down. The old database was migrated and the site brought up again.

[edit] Hosting

MacTalk is currently hosted on a Sun Fire X2100 2.2Ghz Dual Core AMD64 Server at Infinite Networks in Canberra, Australia. The machine was donated by admin, "Currawong" who along with Infinite Networks set up the software and settings to get the site working on it.

However, up until January 28th, 2008, MacTalk was hosted on a dual 1Ghz Apple Xserve at Infinite Networks in Canberra, Australia. The machine was donated by a user, "Chrissara" and purchased with the help of Greg Sharp of the Australian Mac Users Group.

[edit] MacTalk Magazine

A single issue of MacTalk Magazine was produced, available for free in print and as a PDF. [6]

[edit] Most Popular threads

The following list excludes long-running threads, such as Post your desktop and the like. An up-to-date list of the most popular articles can be found on the site.
MacBook Inferno with approx. 132,000 views.
Do you need to defrag your Mac HD? The answer revealed! with approx. 76,000 views.
iTMS Australia - is it still coming? with approx. 73,000 views. This thread ran from February to October 2005.
How-To: The ultimate iTunes Media Server with approx. 55,000 views.
Refurbished Macs - Bargain or Hell in Shiny White Box? with approx. 42,500 views.
Diary of a MacBook Nightmare with approx. 32,000 views.

[edit] MacTalk Podcasts

On September 8, 2007, Anthony "decryption" Agius released the first MacTalk podcast, "I Only Bought it Because It's New" consisting of himself, Jedda "jedda" Wignall, Peter "fulltimecasual" Wells and Marc "marc" Edwards of iSlayer fame. The concept of the podcasts has been a group of guys sitting around drinking beer and talking about current Mac topics. As of May 6, 2008, there are 25 podcasts, each approximately an hour long, available for free through the iTunes Music Store.

[edit] Significant Events

[edit] 2004

March 11, 2004 - 200th user [7]
April 19, 2004 - Site moves to Infinite Networks server [8] from its previous host, DataCenter.
May 18, 2004 - First external review of AppleTalk by the Australian Mac Users Group. [9]
June 20, 2004 - First Slashdotting for an article by Atomic on Mirrored Drive Door G4 Powermac cooling modifications. [10]
July 2, 2004 - 500 members [11]
July 27, 2004 - 600 members [12]
September 1, 2004 - 700 members [13]
October 2, 2004 - 900 members [14]
October 25, 2004 - 2nd Slashdotting for an article by Danamania on installing Mac OS X on a 25Mhz Apple Mac Quadra using Linux and an emulator. [15]
December 16, 2004 - 1200 members. [16]

[edit] 2005

Discussion of the upcoming iTunes Music Store in Australia put a lot of focus on AppleTalk throughout 2005 with an increase in discussion, signups and server load.
February 10, 2005 - Third Slashdotting for the iMac Mini Micro ATX mod. [17]
February 28, 2005 - iTMS Australia - is it still coming? thread begins and ends up running for 9 months until the store opens.
March 22, 2005 - The infamous "Orange Sofa" forum is created for off-topic discussion (now hidden from non-members). The name was chosen for its uniqueness matching the uniqueness of Appletalk. [18]
March 22, 2005 - First major forum re-organisation with forums being renamed and created. [19]
March 23, 2005 - 2000 members. [20]
April 1, 2005 - April Fools day with Disko writing a fake story claiming that Apple Legal had contacted Appletalk regarding trademark infringement. [21]
April 3, 2005 - First Forum Leaders are selected (individual forum moderators). [22]
April 26, 2005 - Discussion of the iTunes Music Store in Australia mentioned in the Age.[23]
April 27, 2005 - Forum members discovery of a loophole in the iTunes Music Store reported in the Sydney Morning Herald [24] resulting in heavy server loads.[25]
April 29, 2005 - 3000 member mark reached only 1 month and 5 days after reaching 2000.[26]
September 26, 2005 - The Trading Forum is restricted to members with more than 30 posts or 60 days membership who sign up from that day onwards, after issues with some sales. [27]
October 19, 2005 - Hitwise ranks Appletalk #8 in their 'News and Media - IT Media' industry section based on the number of visits. [28]
October 25, 2005 - iTunes Music Store Australia goes live. The iTMS Australia - is it still coming? thread is finally closed after 9 months.
November 10, 2005 - AppleTalk is moved from Infinite Networks US server to their Australian server after the US server fails during a kernel upgrade.
[29]
December 24, 2005 - 6000 members [30]

[edit] 2006

April 26, 2006 - The AppleTalk forum, running Invision Power Board 1.3 is hacked and a number of members receive email suggesting they download a windows trojan. The forum skin has an iframe inserted causing popups and other re-directions. Windows users are redirected to a site that attempts to load a trojan or virus on their computer. [31]
April 27, 2006 - AppleTalk is taken off-line to rebuild the site around Invision Power Board 2 to overcome the security issues.
April 29, 2006 - AppleTalk comes back online with Invision Power Board 2 after iSlayer [32] rebuilds the forum skin for the new software. The site is moved to an Apple XServe 1Ghz DP donated some months before by a member, Chrissara.
May 15, 2006 - AppleTalk is ranked No. 7 by visits by Hitwise in their News and Media - IT Media category during the quarter ending in March 2006. [33]
May 20, 2006 - 20,000 topics milestone reached. [34]
May 30, 2006 - 7000 Members. [35]
August 9, 2006 - MacTalk Australia becomes incorporated, with a new domain, mactalk.com.au. [36]
August 17, 2006 - decryption beings his News, news and more news... series of news posts. [37] derived of stories from numerous RSS feeds he watches.
September 8, 2006 - First major Digg'ing with the Core 2 Duo iMacs - Value Proposition [38] article. The heavy traffic takes the server almost offline. [39]
October 9, 2006 - AppleTalk Australia officially switches to MacTalk Australia. [40]
October 16, 2006 - 8000 members. [41]
October 20, 2006 - MacTalk Magazine Issue #1 released. [42]
October 23, 2006 - The forums, running Invision Power Board 2, are hacked again. Software updates that would have prevented the hack hadn't been applied due to the upgrades breaking the forum "wrapper", a skin built to surround the forums that gave it its unique look. In the subsequent week, the admins decided that the forum should be switched to VBulletin and iSlayer [43] built a completely new skin. The old forum was imported into the new one, albeit imperfectly, with some images, links and posts broken.
October 31, 2006 - MacTalk returns online running VBulletin 3.6. [44]

[edit] 2007

March 7, 2007 - A user discovers that the latest version of iTunes mentions TV ratings for Australia, suggesting Apple may be planning to release TV shows through the Australian iTunes Music Store.[45] The discovery is reported in The Age newspaper.[46]
March 12, 2007 - A user, mattyb, is woken in the middle of the night by his flatmate to find his MacBook is on fire, due to a battery fault. The subsequent thread he posts, with pictures, becomes the most viewed MacTalk topic since the sites inception, with 132,000 views as of November 2007. [47] Despite the traffic, the site holds up fine, due to the heavy caching employed on the server.
March 14, 2007 - User iMarty posts his long saga, Diary of a MacBook Nightmare on how he had 6 MacBooks replaced, each with different faults. The thread, posted to Digg, has received approximately 32,000 views as of November 2007.[48]
June 4, 2007 - The rules for accessing the Trading Forums are further restricted to 100 posts and 60 days membership, up from 30 posts or 60 days.
September 8, 2007 - The first MacTalk Podcast is released. [49]
October 15, 2007 - One of the founders, Matt "Disko" Kelsh steps down as an administrator due to increasing work demands.

[edit] 2008

January 29, 2008 - Amos "Currawong" Barnett, with the help of Infinite Networks, puts the new Sun MacTalk Server online, and decommissions the old G4 Xserve.
April 1, 2008 - MacTalk's annual April fools prank was in the form of a press release on the front page of the site informing the users that MacTalk had been acquired by Fone Zone Inc.
April 9, 2008 - Breaks news of iPhone being sold in Australia on multiple carriers, together with rough dates for Australian market launch. ([50])