Wow, I just realized it has been a really long time since I last blogged here. We (GS programmers) have been busy these last few months. The first of many new and exciting things coming out of recent R&D launched yesterday. GameSpot now has a Wii customized site. It isn't a full version of the site on the Wii (that would be lame anyway) but it gets you the information you want where you want it. If you're like me, you hate looking through the virtual games on the Wii then having to go somewhere else to find out if they're any good. Nintendo just displays those little graphics, bad ones at that, and no real data about the games. Now we are giving you that info via the Opera web browser that you can use on the Wii.

Some of the current features:

- Console game ratings

- Latest Wii news

- Interactions via the Wiimote (the controller) such as twisting to rate a game or shaking to change things

- People who don't have a GameSpot account can still rate games!

- If you do have a GameSpot account and are logged in, your ratings will show up on both sites.

Things coming either soon or in the relatively near future:

- Video. The Wii only supports flash 7 so we need to make a few updates to our player to be flash 7.

- PMs. I believe donkeljohn said he wants this there.

What else do you want there? Sound off and let us know. Send us your suggestions in the Site Enhancements & Feedback forum.

Well, technically I didn't buy it, my wife did. She decided to give me my x-mas present early this year. I don't game that often so could never really justify buying one myself. Especially since I think fair is fair and she would get something $$ too if I did. Well, she got her GPS for x-mas and I got my Xbox.

The only games I have right now are the two that came in the bundle - Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I did go out and buy Oblivion but the disk is busted and I can't actually play it. ;( That actually has me kind of mad, but at least they said (over the phone) that they'll swap it out for me.

I also added my Gamertag to my profile. Yippee, a whole 80 points.

After many months of the San Francisco meetup group being cancelled, I've hijacked it and moved it to CNET.

I haven't gotten the official group switched to us yet but that'll come soon enough. Someday the coordinator will need to talk to one of us in the group. If not, I'll figure out a way to get them kicked.

So if you're in the SF area and are a PHP developer, signup for the group and join us the 1st Thursday of the month meetup to talk all things PHP. I'm not sure if it'll be at 6pm or 7pm yet, but we'll work that out over the next few weeks.

Next week on Tuesday Oct 2nd at 6pm, the CNET Entertainment team is giving a presentation for developers at our SF office. This is an opportunity for interested developers to learn more about our sites and about our open positions on the engineering team.

Here's the blurb from the HR team about this presentation. If you're interested in working for us as a developer, I highly recommend you attend.

Ever wonder how one team is able to support 49 million unique visitors and over 1 billion page views each month?
Want to hear how to build a PHP/MySQL framework to share code between multiple sites?

Please join us for a panel discussion with the top technical talent of GameSpot.com, TV.com, MP3.com and FilmSpot.com. You will hear details on the infrastructure and code behind these websites. Topics covered will include:

* The hardware to support 49 million unique visitors and over 1 billion page views each month
* How to build a PHP/MySQL framework to share code between multiple sites
* Using templating to separate PHP and HTML, and also to reuse common site elements
* Lessons and tips learned from developing in this high demand environment

The event will take place Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at CNET Networks, 235 2nd Street, San Francisco.

Doors will open at 6:00 p.m. and the panel discussion will start promptly at 6:30 p.m. Mexican grub and cupcakes will be served.

Please register below and hope to see you there!
http://www.talentecology.com/cnet/events/cne.asp

Yes, I know we're a PHP shop and that link is to an asp page. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm a developer and not in HR.

For a complete list of all jobs available here at CNET, please go to our Jobs site: http://www.cnetnetworks.com/careers/

I've been trying to figure out for the last couple of weeks how to write this blog post. Its one that's difficult for me in many ways. So I'm just going to come right out and say it.

I'm the new lead engineer for GamesSpot.com.

There I said it. I always feel weird talking about my qualifications or about promotions I may or may not have gotten. Mostly because I don't want to come across as bragging about it.

But you know what? This is a promotion that I'm damn proud of. I've been with CNET for a little over 2 years now and I'm still very excited about where the company is going and where its taking its properties like GameSpot.

For those of you who don't know me, I started about 2 years ago as software engineer assigned to the "community team." This meant that back with the 10/03/05 rewrite I help convert all the flexi_forums code into what it is today. sbritton deserves the vast 99% of the credit for this btw, he taught me more about high capacity/high availability websites than anyone else. About 18 months ago I was put in charge of the community team as sbritton transitioned into a flash dev (his passion). Over the last 6 months I've been taking on more of the dba/sys ops/site architect responsibilities from JSD for the Entertainment division of CNET. And now, with all of that behind me, I'm now leading a kick ass team of developers for the "Games" team.

Why is it called "Games" rather than GameSpot? Well that's a good question. We have several other gaming related sites under the Games umbrella, including GameFaqs, GameRankings, and the most recent of which is SportsGamer.com.

With that in mind, I'd like to briefly introduce you to the dedicated engineers on the Games team. There are other people who have helped get us to this point, and many other who are helping us to the future, but these are the die-hard cast of characters who work on GameSpot.com and its affiliated sites day in and day out.

q_oats: q_oats had been with the community team since January of 2006 and is now part of the Games team. He's been known for many of the moderation enhancements over the last year. Also in his repertoire of accomplishments is the lead on the community features for FilmSpot.com.

bigethan: bigethan has been on GameSpot for quite some time now. He's the one that brought about the reminder system we have for live events. He also put together the "uberpop" which is the combination video player/chat window/Q&A.

lamborgandhi: lamborgandhi is the one who brought you the Scavenator contest. Most recently he was the lead on rewriting our search engine. He changed it from the old, run-down mule that it was into the thoroughbred it is today.

phil315: phil315 started with us earlier this year and have come out of the gate fixing things like the top 10 lists for our international sites, helping write Facebook apps for FilmSpot and rewriting the user review system.

hanzgroove: hanzgroove joins us with our recent acquisition of SportsGamer.com. He's been working with them for about two years. Right now he has his nose to the grindstone bringing SportsGamer into the CNET fold and making sure it works on its new hardware.