360voice Dev Blog

News.com.com talks about our .com

I have been watching the referrals like a hawk today and spotted an article over by Caroline McCarthy over at News.com.com:

If you'd like to give your Xbox 360 a little bit of personality, and creating your own games doesn't do it for you, maybe you should consider letting your video game console start a blog. Really!

Read more

Steve and I are more than willing to do interviews! If any of you out there are interested in learning more about 360voice, just ask!

Link to your latest entry

Someone asked for this in the support comments and it was pretty easy to do, so I threw it together. If you want to create a single link that will always point to your most recent entry, use this URL:

http://www.360voice.com/api/blog-latest.asp?tag=ChangeAgent

Put your own tag in, and it will always take you to the most recent individual blog item.

We're in the Washington Post!

Today 360voice.com is featured in a column by Mike Musgrove of the Washington Post:

My Xbox 360 has a blog, and it's starting to get on my nerves.

While I was off on a vacation recently, the slick game console spent the week talking about me behind my back and posting snarky comments on the Web.

...The blog is an automated software widget hosted at 360Voice.com that takes advantage of the Microsoft Xbox 360's extensive Web connectivity features, originally designed to let gamers compare their scores and game collections.

Read more

(the link is to MSNBC because WP is reg required)

Thanks for the mention Mike! If you are visiting from the WP article, welcome!

Tuesday night dev night

As you loyal dev blog readers will know, Steve and I use Tuesday nights to crank out code for the site. We didn't make a ton of progress. First off, due to the Uno playing and Vision camera demoing, we got started a bit later than we wanted. On top of that, moving our massive database is taking much longer than we would have thought. Also, scaling out the architecture to be multi-server is introducing all kinds of unforeseen issues and we are building a completely new trigger-based scheduling system for all the processing jobs.

There is definitely no shortage of things to do... unfortunately it is nothing that anyone will notice when it is complete except the fact that the site will run better!... at least we hope... with all our minds and hearts and Jedi spirit... ok Steve and I aren't Jedis... I don't know why I wrote that...

Want to check out the Vision Camera?

Trapper and Myself will be playing Uno today Tuesday August 29th at 8:30PM EST for a little bit.  If you want to see us on Video and ask questions about the camera (yes it's really rad), then send us a message or a friends request and we will try to get you in.

We won't be on for long, but want to make get as many people to check it out before launch so we will do it again soon.

Gamertags are 'Fatty Chubs' and 'ChangeAgent'

See ya on!

Update 8/29/2006 8:54pm CST

Trapper here... I want to say thanks to everyone who joined up for a quick (and sometimes not so quick) game of Uno:

• xXxBIGGYxXx
• mew42003
• ITs 0n FIRE91
• lightsup55
• litheon
• exterminator13

We got to show off the fancy Vision cameras... if you don't have one, I would suggest picking it up. I have to say it is pretty sweet. There are tons of great features and even little hidden ones that I keep discovering every time I use it. For $40 (or something close to that), its a pretty sweet little peripheral!

Light Mode

Because the badge and leader board processors are so intense, we need to disable them to make our work on transitioning to the new server easier. We will try and activate them again as soon as possible. A note about this has been added to the top of the blog pages for reference!

If you are worried about your streak badge, if you keep playing, you won't lose it. For those of you reporting problems with badges, we will make those fixes when we are ready to turn the badges back on.

This will help us work faster because the database won't be continuously cranking on all that data, allowing us to run the queries we need to and take better snapshots for test migrations to the new environment.

Thank you all for your patience!

Back to normal

Steve and I restored a backup and was able to get entries from 24th and 25th (and 26th) back to normal... and hopefully no one lost any streaks or anything. The biggest issue right now is that the time it takes to import the data is getting longer and longer, meaning we have to run the blog processor later and later. We are currently thinking up methods for solving this so it will scale. Stay tuned for when we figure that out!

Our first negative comment

It had to happen sooner or later... honestly we deserve it right about now. We received this email a short time ago:

The 360 blog was a neat concept that I thought would be a great log for what I did day by day.  Since June, about 10% of the entries have been incorrect in one way or another...  This last week has been the last straw.  From missing entries to just plain incorrect (8/25/06's entry says I didn't play again- the second in a month, and one of many since June), I have lost faith in the blog system to correctly and accurately blog what I did on any given day.

While some of the inaccuracy has been plainly stated in the support wiki... there has been an issue we have been trying to track down since yesterday. Since 8-22, people from T-Z have been missing entries. After much searching we found a TYPO in the code that pulls the XML for those threads. For two days, we lost all of the game data for those people. It cannot be retrieved. This is completely our fault. We were moving over our XML pulls to a new location that Microsoft created for XCDP members and forgot to test the thread that runs the import for gamertags T-Z. It was a simple over site that caused a ton of problems. Again... we apologize.

Secondly, the blogs ran today, but they are incorrect for many people because the jobs that do all the file splitting are running HORRIBLE on our current server. This is one of the reasons we are in the process of moving to a completely new architecture. I am unable to log in to the server from work, so when I get home tonight, I will delete all the incorrect blogs and re-run them with the complete data... your entries should be fixed. I will also fix any broken streak badges for the affected people so never fear!

Third, due to the way our system works... pulling data from Microsoft... there is a certain level of inaccuracy that will always be there. We only have the LASTPLAYED date... we don't have a startplayed... or a currentlyplaying... so depending on when you start, how long you play, and when you end, the gaming may or may not be captured... especially since so many of you play during the late night while our system is trying to grab data to process. Maybe 10% is the margin of error as the complaint email suggests... I myself play games from 8pm to 11pm so my blog is always 100% accurate because I am never even close to the 3am EST cutoff. My lastplayed date is always the previous day.

In the end, we apologize for the data loss and are doing our best to get things running smoothly again. We are trying to build a world class service in our spare time and are quickly learning it is a painful and time consuming process... but we honestly think the decisions we are making right now will help provide a higher level of service going forward.

The sunny side of the street

Today was one of those rough days where nothing seemed to be going right. With the missing blog entries for T-Z and the DNS outage... we figured if we couldn't catch a break we would try and buy one. So we now find ourselves well on our way to greener pastures... spending a lot of green to do it in the process... The AMEX got a workout today people! ;)

It is in these times of weary fingers worn from the frantic typing of domain zones and SQL queries that we look to the emails and rss feeds for the kind words that all of you lay upon us. And for that, we recognize and thank you. Here is the latest:

Triplekill.com
"It is one of the coolest things I've seen to date."

Stewart-T.com
"Check out my 360voice... He never stops moaning!"

Elusive Twilight
"It's pretty cool actually, and adds to the heap of fun gadgetry that is available for use with Microsoft's newest system."

Mark's Spot
"...an interesting concept that I thought would give a go."

Steve Clayton: Geek In Disguise
"XBOX 360 goes Big Brother"

Thanks everyone! We are doing our best to keep your stuff running!

RSS for Daily Gamerscore Change

I found myself having to go to the leaderboard every day just to see who was winning the race for Daily Gamerscore change. I decided it might be easier just to subscribe to a list of the top 10 or so, that way I can just get them delivered every morning to my RSS reader. So here you have it... RSS for the Gamerscore Change leaderboard:

What it looks like:

So go check it out. I was trying to think if RSS would make sense for all the leaderboards. They don't change as often... let me know if an RSS feed for Top Gamerscore and Total Games Played would be useful. If so, I can add them in pretty easily.