As the year came to an end, (mt) Media Temple employees came up with an incredible idea; start a donation fund for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child). To date, their donations have added 15 laptops to this amazing educational program. We think that’s pretty cool and deserves public mention.

If you want to donate like we did, or learn more about this incredible program, you can go here. If you’d like to receive a laptop and donate, you can choose OLPC’s “Give one get one” offer that expires Dec. 31st.

We’re excited to announce hosting Gift Cards are now available! An awesome gift for anyone already working on the web or looking to get started in the new year. For only $95 you can give someone special a year of (gs) Grid-Service Lite web hosting. This unique gift can be sent as a physical gift card or scheduled for automatic digital delivery. Check out the Gift Card web page for more details. Happy holidays!

Sydney, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Mexico City, Barcelona, Johannesburg, and London rejoice. We have local numbers for you to contact us.

We based this round of numbers on customer density in Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Spain, South Africa and the UK. But, if you think we should have more, let us know in the comments below!

We’re excited to announce the launch of the first phase of our Django GridContainer beta program. Everyone in the program should have already received information on how to access their Django Container. If you missed the beta sign-up window in the past don’t worry we’re still accepting a limiting number of testers into the program. Please visit the sign-up page to get started!

The ever prodigious Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits fame has developed a new site called Foamee. Foamee makes use of the Twitter APIs to help you keep track of who owes you a beer, and vice-versa. We here at (mt) think that’s pretty darn cool.

The site was developed on and is hosted by (mt) Media Temple’s (gs) Grid-Service, so go over and check it out! And congratulations to Dan for a very cool idea and his always impeccable execution.

A great new feature for the MySQL GridContainers has just been made available inside the AccountCenter. The new my.cnf editor lets you directly edit your MySQL server’s main configuration file and change just about any MySQL system variables you want. Visit your MySQL GridContainer controls page to enable the editor right away.

With the launch of this new tool the MySQL GridContainers now offer all the control you want from a dedicated MySQL resource without any of the maintenance hassles of a dedicated database server! More MySQL GridContainer features are on the horizon. Let us know what you’d like to see next in the comments!

The team behind the cool new Magento open-source eCommerce platform have just posted some great install guides with lots of screenshots showing you how to get Magento working on both the (gs) Grid-Service and (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server. Big thanks to everyone who contributed to these awesome guides! Be sure to check them out if you’re interested in working with Magento.

As we round out the biggest (mt) year to date, we wanted you to know about our last few events! The first one is FITC Hollywood (Oct 22-23). If you haven’t got your tickets for FITC Hollywood yet, be sure to pick those up before they sell out. We’ll be throwing a party for the event on October 23rd at Little Temple in Silver Lake. If you’re in LA, stop by and have a drink on us. RSVP instructions below.

Following FITC, our Lead Technologist, Chris Lea, will be speaking at Startup LA (Oct. 26th) on the importance of scalability for your start up venture. If you’re thinking about starting up a site or app, this is a great place to learn what it takes.

Ryan Carson is coming to the US to blow us away in NYC at his Future of Web Design Conference (Nov. 7-8). (mt) Media Temple will be blowing out the season with the closing party at Rebel NYC! The featured acts are Kerouac, Alex English and 33HZ. If you’re an NYC (mt) client, we’ll have a special limited guest list so you can attend.

To RSVP for an upcoming party, Email sdesmet at mediatemple.net with either “NYC (mt) party” or “LA (mt) Party” in the subject and we’ll do our best to get you on the list!

Glenn Wolsey, notable blogger and (mt) partner, was interviewed by Steve Rubel at Adage yesterday. We’ve known for some time about Glenn’s talent and we’re extremely excited to see others acknowledge his accomplishments. With 9 visits to Digg’s front page this year, we think Glenn is an exceptional contributor to the blogosphere and Mac community.

Cheers Glenn, good on ya’ mate!

As stated in our previous emails to those enrolled, tonight (mt) Engineers will be conducting a free upgrade for all of our (dv) 3.0 servers enrolled in our Update Option Program (UOP). We’ll be upgrading your install of Plesk to the newest release, 8.2.1, to improve your security and server performance.

Only (dv) 3.0 services enrolled in the UOP will be affected by this upgrade. (dv) 2.0 servers or any other (mt) Media Temple hosting products will not be updated at this time. For more information and a brief FAQ, please read the detailed system incident.