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I’ve been happily using my 360 HD DVD add-on since last Christmas when my parents gave it to me as a Christmas present. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for a Netflix free trial to rent some HD content and have been using it since. I’ve gone through, for the most part, all the worthwhile HD DVD movies. Now, I’ve been catching up on some films that I haven’t seen but had heard good things about them.

I checked my email a few minutes ago to find out that Netflix is moving to Blu-Ray exclusively. I have to say I’m a little disappointed, but I figured it was coming at some point. The price of being an early-adopter I suppose. Here’s what the email said:

We’re Going Blu-ray

Dear Brian,

You’re receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well.

While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements.

Toward the end of February, HD DVDs in your Saved Queue will automatically be changed to standard definition DVDs. Then toward the end of this year, all HD DVDs in your Queue will be changed to standard definition DVDs. Don’t worry, we will contact you before this happens.

Update: Calvin News article about the talk

Well today, a “software engineer” (air quotes) from IBM came and gave a speech centered around the idea that there are more jobs in the IT-industry than just programming for Computer Science majors. My perspective on the talk was biased a little bit from the past number of months, but it was an insightful talk.

The presenter touched on a few points relating to her career and her experiences. The one that stood out most, and I think mostly because this is her personal experience, is that Project Management is an increasing job-market. In fact, before today I had never heard of PMP or PMI. Project management might be making inroads in large corporations, but how does it apply to the development world, and more specifically, the web development world? Who or what context says that a team or company should have a Project Manager and why?

During the talk, I felt like everything was being generalized to the large-scale cooperations. Know I don’t claim to know the hearts of all CS majors at Calvin, but I question how many honestly want to work in a large-scale environment such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, or other. To be clear, a number are interested in an internship at one of the above, but I wonder how many would be interested in a full-time position. But, I don’t want to get into the speculation of what others may do with there lives, so I’ll leave that and move on to what my own feelings are.

I’m currently working for a small, agile company where we do consulting and web development work. We don’t have a specific project manager, nor do I really see the need for a designated person to oversee our work. To me, it creates one more layer of abstraction and dissonance among the organization. Granted, if the company were to grow and have multiple developers working on multiple projects at the same time, I can see some use in managing and maintaining those projects. But even at this level, couldn’t the management be delegated to those who are on each project? At some point, some one will want to know when which project is deploying and polishing up, or which ones are just getting started.

From a business aspect, Project Management makes sense. But does a developer need to worry about it? I’d say that my bosses worry about management, because for them, each project they take on is an opportunity cost. If they work 25 hours on project x for customer x, then that’s only 15 hours to work on project y for customer y. How developers manage their time as well as their customer relationship seems to be important, but does managing time and relationships equate to project management on a small scale in the case of a two-man team? I don’t know the answer but I think its an interesting proposition.

How do small-scale companies handle project management if they are dealing with multiple projects? Is Project management different to Product management at this scale, or are they too similar to call different?

All in all, I think Project Management has its place in the world, but in relation to my own experiences, it seems as though it grinds a bit on a small scale. On a side note, I’ll be graduating with a CS major and a Business minor. I’ll be exposed to the world of business, although in a limited sense, I will still have knowledge of accounting, management styles, and other topics. Will this help me get a job after a graduate? Will a business minor prepare me for engaging customers and communicating with clients?

Possibly, but in a general sense, I feel that it will make me aware of the other aspects of my job, specifically the costs associated with development, the various goals and my responsibilities to others. Knowing thedifferences between Absorption and Variable costing may not be important in the long run, but it highlights the importance of all aspects of a business.

Now I’ll turn it over to you. If you’re a developer, where do you see yourself in the realm of Project Management? What’s important to you and how do you handle various projects?

The current extent of photo editing on the popular photo-sharing site is limited to rotating a picture. Now, through the integration of Picnik, Flickr will be able to edit photos online.

I’ve played around with Picnik before and found it relatively easy to use, as well as intuitive. For the simple edits, Picnik is a great addition to Flickr. I’m looking forward to seeing where things progress with this, and maybe now I’ll start editing my photos a little bit more. My CS3 hasn’t seen its share of love and attention yet.

Via TechCrunch

I wish there was a way for my computer to tell what music is being played on another computer that is in close proximity to mine. We (my bosses and I) listened to some great music yesterday that was both interesting and new to me, but since it was played only from one computer, it was most likely scrobbled on that computer.

I’ve had similar experiences while working out of the Lemonjellos.  I’m
listening to, albeit subconsciously at times.  There’s been a number of
times where it’d be nice to see the artist and song information that’s
being played in the shop and have a record of what you heard while
you’re visit there.

It would be awesome, if through some sort of wireless communication, that my mac could tell which song I’m listening to and scrobble it, even if I’m not playing it directly from my computer. I don’t know how Last.fm’s scrobbling works to its full extent, but I assume it just reads the ID3 tags of the file and then sends it to the servers. Does any one know of anything like this or something that does this already?