Answers on a comment and we are looking for precision in the location here, just the city name is not good enough!

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Well, it looks like Mozilla have got their record…

Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we got more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. That’s more Firefox downloads than we’ve ever had in a single day — an impressive feat indeed!

Please be patient while the good people of Guinness review our World Record attempt. This might take a few days so please check back here. And, a huge thanks for all of your support!

Looking on the map; France, Spain and the UK managed around 300,000 downloads each, Germany nearly 700,000, China came in with just 175k somewhat surprisingly and Russia even less at 110k (more copies were downloaded from Holland). Amazingly Iran recorded 260,000 (what gives there then? Anyone got any clues?) along with Italy at a similar figure and the USA dwarfed all others with a massive total of over 2.5million.

I guess the counts are indicative rather than completely accurate but it’s an interesting map and think it’s pretty awesome that more than 8million copies of Firefox 3 got delivered, for free, in just 24hrs. Congratulation to Mozilla and to the Open Source community. Now we should all go and get hammered on Wine which, after approx. 15 years, was finally released as a 1.0 product on the 17th June.

PS - The Mozilla counter is still counting BTW so I wonder how long before it reaches 10m? Tomorrow morning perhaps…

[Update: Yep. It's 06:18 here in the UK and their counter is already over 10m by a hundred thousand or so]

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You have until this 19:15 this evening (UK BST) to get Firefox 3 and help to create a world record. There are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac.

As of 08:22 this morning, the tally stood at a bandwidth burning 4,784,601 downloads!

So what are you waiting for…

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Over the last few years Becta, the government’s advisers to education on technology, have been consistently increasing their level of interest and support for Free and Open Source Software. Today they surprised a lot of folk by awarding a contract relating to Free and Open Source software to a little consultancy called AlphaPlus. No I haven’t heard of them either. There was quite a bit of competition for this tender, and some of those who were unlucky this time, including our friend Mark Taylor at the Open Source Consortium, are struggling to understand the decision. You can read Mark’s reflective musings in an open letter here. It doesn’t appear to me that AlphaPlus have done anything untoward in the process, most reactions I have seen were along the lines of “Who?” rather than “Not them again!”. I am sure the education sector in the UK will continue on the path of software Freedom, in fact I wouldn’t be shocked if Freedom 1 (The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs) became mandatory for all software used in Education. I am sure that as schools continue on their path they will need more help and assistance which they will get via procurement processes (procurement just means “buying stuff from people who like filling in forms”) and in these processes contracts will be awarded to big companies and small companies and companies full of educationalists and others full of geeks. Some you win, most you lose.

We at The Open Learning Centre congratulate AlphaPlus Consultancy on winning this contract and wish them the best of luck in delivering a fantastic solution that will just encourage more and more future contracts to go to deserving little consulting companies

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As most of you will no by now, Firefox 3 is very close to making it’s full release. Next Tuesday in fact.

If you visit the link above, or click the badge in the left hand column, you can “pledge” to download it on the day. The Pledge Reads:

I pledge to get Firefox 3 during Download Day to set the Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours.

I’ve been using FF3 for sometime now and it’s pretty bloody good. Faster, uses less memory and (apart from the Beta 5 release that used to just disappear at the most inconvenient times!) rock solid too! It has some really neat new features such as the “intelligent” address bar, the bookmark start, tagged bookmarks and many more. [Update: I caught this newspick on Groklaw. Here's a Field Guide to FF3 and explanations of many of the new features]

Go on, make the 17th June the biggest download day ever. We’ll be promoting it to visitors on our stand at the Surrey Expo in Camberley.

PS: One thing I noticed on the map of pledges is that France is ahead of the UK by over 10,000 pleadges! Come on England, we might not be in the Euro 2008 Football tournament, but surely we can beat the French at getting Firefox???

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Do you remember that total Jerk Dennis Byron? The chap who thought that Digistan was some sort of terrorist organisation? Well here’s a rather nicely ironic way to shove his ignorant and frankly stupid views in that familiar place where “the sun doesn’t shine”.

A fellow colleague on the blogosphere, Russell Ossendryver, sent me an email linking to a recent on-line petition instigated by John McCreesh (of OpenOffice.org) on 10 Downing Street’s petition engine.

Basically it calls for the UK Government to:

(1) Procure only information technology that implements free and open standards;

(2) Deliver e-government services based exclusively on free and open standards;

(3) Use only free and open digital standards in their own activities.

as adopted and proclaimed by the founders of the Digital Standards Organization in The Hague on 21 May 2008.

That sounds like a fine idea to me! It would save the country literally hundreds of millions of pounds just for starters.

There are some particularly interesting names already on the list of signatories:

Mark Taylor (Open Source Consortium), Chris Puttick (CIO for Oxford Archaeology), Glyn Moody (Journalist and Open Source Commentator: http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com), and Ian Lynch (of INGOTS fame).

I’ve signed it. If you think that Open Standards are important (and you SHOULD if you are reading this!) then what are you waiting for? Click here and register your opinion.

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An often quoted phrase used to describe the concept of Free Software is that it is Free as in “Free Speech” not as in “Free Beer”, i.e. the important part is the freedom and liberty rather than the price tag of zero. Well I think a more apt comparison might be Free eggs and I have started a little quest for Oological freedom. Well the eggs themselves will indeed be Free, but first I need to buy some pet chickens.

Some people think the eggs come first, others think the chickens come first. They are all wrong. The chicken coop comes first, otherwise a fox will eat them. I started out thinking I wanted an Eglu, but they are kind of the Mac of the hen house world. They look great, but they are fearsomely expensive for what you get (£400) and hard to modify.

so then I looked at more traditional wooden hen houses and purchased this one from a seller on ebay, a quarter of the price of the Eglu and much bigger (although I need to build a run to go with it)

It should arrive in the next few days, I will let you know how I get on with my quest for Free eggs.

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The Open Learning Centre has a stand at the forthcoming Surrey Heath Business Expo in Camberley on 17th June. We have been busy chaps getting stands made up, givaway CDs printed and preparing the all important speaking slot. We have a 20 minute seminar showing local businesses how they can spend less and do more, by using Free and Open Source Software. If you are in the general area then do pop in to see us, and the other exhibitors. It promises to be a fun event, a small local and friendly tradeshow, we are looking forward to it.

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