Well, I love my Xbox360 HD-DVD drive, and watching full 1080p HD-DVD movies on the Elite model. I've bought about 10 or so HD-DVDs and have rented a few from NetFlix recently. But, in what is looking more and more like an inevitably certain format death, Netflix announced today that it will no longer be stocking new HD-DVD releases, and they'll eventually phase out the current titles from their stock.

In fact, as I was writing this post an email from Netflix just arrived that explains the change:

We're Going Blu-ray

Dear Greg,

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.

You can click here to change your format preferences.

We're sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1 (888) 638-3549.

-The Netflix Team

Well, sometimes you make a bet and you lose.

So, my (our) options at this point appear to be...

1. Wait around, hope against hope, and pray that HD-DVD miraculously sees a resurgence (umm, yeah...)
2. Hope someone builds a dual-format drive for the Xbox360 that can replace the one I have now (not likely)
3. Buy one of the new dual-format/combo drives that you can put in a PC and go that route (possibility, depending on what they end up costing, and I have to think about how and where I want to play movies)
4. Buy a PS3 (ouch, in so many ways)
5. Just give in and buy a Blu-ray stand-alone player (but I wonder if I should wait til they drop in price some more, they ain't cheap)

Any other ideas? Let me know!

I've been a monthly customer of T-Mobile's hotspot service for a few years. I used the service almost exclusively at Starbucks stores. So, with the new announcement that AT&T and Starbucks will be offering two-hour chunks of use for free if you have a Starbucks card (the refillable type) as well as a $20 per month unlimited use option. It looks like I will no longer need the more-expensive T-Mobile account. The only time I've ever used it outside of Starbucks was at airport locations (Red Carpet Club), and I'm not flying as much as I used to (thank goodness).

You can't really beat free WiFi, and it's everywhere these days (except Starbucks), so this is a smart move in my mind.

From BetaNews:

While final pricing structures could change, some details have come out: the service will cost $3.99 for two hours of Internet access. But those customers who register and use their Starbucks card will receive two hours of free access per day. An unlimited plan is available for $19.99, which includes access to over 70,000 AT&T hotspots worldwide.

Existing T-Mobile HotSpot customers aren't being left out in the cold; thanks to an agreement with AT&T, they can continue to access the Wi-Fi at Starbucks without paying extra.

(full story)

Also, see the ars techncia coverage at this link.

I don't think I have actually mentioned it here before (oops), but I use Twitter on a semi-regular basis to jot down thoughts, post my "status" and keep an eye on what some other people are doing. My Twitter name is greghughes (go figure), so feel free to add me to your follow list, or whatever. :)

Twitter has a mobile client (at m.twitter.com, but note that it only works on a mobile device) that works, but it's pretty basic and feature-incomplete. So, since I had some time this evening I decided to look around for software (to run on the PC) and web-based (for the iPhone) clients.

I found a few options, including a really nice web-based client specifically made for the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) called PocketTweets, which is clean in appearance and includes pretty much all the Twitter functionality. I can post my own Twitter updates (called "Tweets"), send replies to others, or anything else on Twitter I might want. It's certainly better than any of the other clients I found. Very cool.

Next I need to find a good Windows client that won't crash when run on a 64-bit OS. I've been using Snitter, which is pretty okay but doesn't quite work (update) reliably enough in my experience and I'm not much of a fan of bright and contrasty color schemes. Any ideas?

WTFs/m - that's perfect! I think my good QA friend Brent would probably agree (and laugh out loud)... Mild cartoon language follows, but the humor is worth it.

(discovered via Robert Hensing's blog)

Richard and I spent about 30 minutes the other day chatting with Bil Simser, all-around good guy and MS SharePoint MVP since 2004. SharePoint is a set of technologies I have been involved with since before day one, if that's even possible. I remember vividly deploying SharePoint Portal Server 2001 as a secure extranet site (something it really wasn't intended to do) before it was even released. SharePoint's come a long, long way since then for sure!

It's common for IT professionals to have SharePoint shoved into their laps unsuspectingly by users or prospective users as a platform for business intelligence or document management or collaboration, so it's a good idea to be aware, try it out, see what you can do with it (and what you can't), and what it takes to properly design, build, deploy and manage in the environment.

Listen to the show for analogies, buzz words, licensing, planning, components and other important things to think about when you find yourself in the world of SharePoint.

Bil Simser On Managing Sharepoint (MP3 link)
from RunAs Radio podcast

Richard and Greg talk to Bil Simser about the challenges of managing Sharepoint 2007. Bil points us to the SharePoint Capacity Tool (www.shrinkster.com/uhw) and comparisons between Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (www.shrinkster.com/ui1). Check out Bil's blog at www.shrinkster.com/uhv.

Awesome. Another Improv Everywhere "mission," everyone frozen in place in Grand Central Station at precisely the same time. No need to say more, really - just watch, it's great.

Story and some cool pictures here, and other missions are listed here. Thanks to Jake (once again) for pointing to something cool.

Well, we knew it was coming. Apple's 16GB iPhone is here and it's $100 more than the one we already have. I wonder how many they'll build and sell. It looks like the only change is the storage capacity. For some I guess another 8GB is nice to have, but for me I don't need it. I'll make a move (quickly) when a 3G iPhone ships. Hopefully soon, and hopefully with features like MMS and video recording. iPhone is available in an 8GB model for $399 and the new 16GB model for $499.

There's also a 32GB iPod Touch. Now that's kinda cool. But I already have an iPhone, and if I buy another media player it will probably be a Zune.

So... Anyone buying?

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

That's the basic premise behind Ignite Portland, which is happening this week on Tuesday night at the Bagdad Theater in Portland, Oregon.

I'm going to be there - along with what looks like a few hundred others - checking out what people have to say. If you happen to be in the Portland area, why not come down and check it out? It's free. If you'll be there, sign up ahead of time so they can plan (not required, but nice to do) and let me know so we can say hi!

I've uploaded a few photos from our quick jaunt through Arches National Park, near Moab Utah, at the end of December. My friend Cory and I were driving back to Oregon after a couple days of skiing at Keystone, Colorado and decided to detour briefly to check out the place. It was about four in the afternoon and the light was right. Glad we stopped. The complete flickr photoset is here, and here is a link to my flickr photostream.

Some people I know who live in the city (Portland, Oregon that is) don't always "get it" when I tell them we sometimes get lots of snow out where I live. If it snows down in Portland even just a little bit, the place just shuts down. It's fairly ridiculous, heh. I suppose since I live relatively close, people just have a hard time imagining any significant snow in the vicinity. But it's all about the elevation.

Out my way you have to drive in the ice and snow, that's just the way it is. I grew up in northern New Mexico doing just that. Now, we do get snowed in up here sometimes, between the amount of snow and the wetness of it all on the steep hills. While we're nowhere near snowed in this weekend, it has dumped a fair bit since the sun came up this morning. Well, more like since it got light outside this morning... We're certainly not seeing any direct sunlight today. We've had similar (or deeper) snowfalls several times here in the past month.

From the LiteOn people comes a great design for a mouse that I will gladly plunk down a few  bucks for if it ever makes it to the market. It received a RedDot Design Award, in fact. Here's hoping it finds a place in the real world.

The Moldable mouse can be shaped into pretty much whatever form you like. Goodbye RSI and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? Just change the shape now and then. We can hope!

Moldable Mouse is made of non-toxic lightweight modeling clay, covered with nylon and polyurethane blend fabric. It can be kneaded into any shape the user prefers, and the shape is self-retaining. By allowing a wide variety of hand positions when holding the mouse, it reduces repeated motions of the same posture, thereby minimizing the chance of common mouse-related injuries such as the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The click buttons and touch-sensitive scroll pad of the mouse are stick-on parts with built-in RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device), which can be repositioned for maximum comfort.

The nylon and polyurethane blend fabric covering comes in a variety of colors. The texture of the material feels similar to silk, but is much more flexible. Its softness significantly increases the comfort level of the mouse over that of the traditional plastic versions. Patterns and graphics can be printed on the fabric to make the Moldable Mouse more visually appealing. The base of the mouse, made of 100% recyclable PC/ABS plastic blend, houses the PCB (Printed Circuit Board), laser optics and batteries. Reducing plastic usage to a minimum by using mostly non-toxic clay and fabric, the Moldable Mouse is also an ecologically responsible product.

(via Engadget, via Wired)

The move Microsoft made this morning in publicly offering Yahoo! shareholders a pretty darned decent price per share to acquire the company was a fairly aggressive one, and honestly I've wondered for some time - along with everyone else - when someone would finally make the move. It just makes sense. With the announcement earlier this week by Yahoo! of it's financials and planned layoffs, the timing was about as perfect as it could get.

Everyone and their brother has blogged and commented on this, and I won't waste your time or mine telling you what I think (although I am interested in and have been thinking about the whole "how do you combine CardSpace and OpenID?" question, and there are some obvious and potentially very good answers to that one). Instead, I just wanted to point you to a well-written and (I think) good analysis by a few industry experts that was published today on betanews.com. I suggest you read it if - like me - you are at all interested in the deal and what it means.

Today came an announcement that represents a pretty big step in the identity space. Yahoo! announced they have rolled out beta support for OpenID v2.0 and that Yahoo! is now a provider of OpenIDs. In fact, anyone who has a Yahoo! account can quickly generate a Yahoo! or Flickr-branded OpenID to sign onto any web site that supports OpenID v2.0 for authentication. That's 248 million accounts at Yahoo! that can now potentially be leveraged across the Internet for sign-on.

OpenID is an important standard that came out of the open-source community, which will likely change the way we provide identifying information and gain access to secured web sites on the Internet. It allows its users to have a single identity that can be used across different sites on the Internet. It also allows users to have the proper level of control over how they identify themselves and who they want to trust with that process.

One significant key to success for OpenID as a standard is adoption by a set of trusted identity "providers" - or OpenID-issuing organizations that people are comfortable with when it comes to asserting their identity information. With Yahoo! a large number of regular, everyday people can use their existing accounts to perform OpenID logins on any site supporting the standard. In the future, the hope is that other consumer-trusted providers will see the value of brand recognition that goes along with being the OpenID provider for consumers. Yahoo has me as an OpenID client now, which means every time I log onto an OpenID-enabled site and use that ID, I am by default thinking on some level about Yahoo! -- Pretty smart. It's time for banks, other financial service providers, and similar industries to seriously start thinking this one through. It's coming, and now is the time to be on the bandwagon.

Where can you use your OpenID to log in? Lots of places. There's a list of web sites over at myopenid.com, a service provided by Portland company JanRain. The people at JanRain have created some great software and services around the OpenID standard that businesses can use to leverage OpenID, and that enable social networks around the standard. It's pretty cool stuff.

Here's some basic information about OpenID from the Yahoo! OpenID provider site:

What is OpenID?

In a nutshell, the OpenID technology makes life simpler by having only one username and password to remember.

Once you have enabled your Yahoo! account for OpenID access, you only need to remember your Yahoo! ID and password to use hundreds of websites... So bid farewell to password spreadsheets and stickies all over your desk!

When you are on a web site that supports OpenID login, simply look for a Yahoo! login button. Or if you see a text box with an OpenID icon, simply type in "yahoo.com". You will be sent to Yahoo! to verify your Yahoo! ID and password, and then you will be able to continue on.

You can find out even more at openid.net (the OpenID Foundation), and it's worth pointing out that you can also get an OpenID from a slew of other organizations - after all, it's all about making it your choice. The OpenID foundation keeps a list of providers on its wiki and at this link.

Via Jake at UtterlyBoring.com, the latest in the "Will it Blend?" series is here. Don't mess with Chuck Norris:

You'll find a bunch of humorous blender commercials at http://www.willitblend.com/. You can also buy the blenders there.

Here's another "what's my brain doing to me?" piece of weirdness for you to try...

 

Reads: “While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Now, while doing this draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Hmmm. If you keep trying can you eventually overcome the natural tendency to change directions? I can't seem to do that.

(via Fitz and Digg)