« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »

Leaderboard Changes

Just a few changes to leaderboards:

Games Played: Games for Windows are now included in here, we removed games like Halo 2 (PC) for a while, but are including these again.

Completion %: There are several of these broken down by how many games you have played, this total will now be determined by only games above 0 gamerscore.  So If I played 20 games, but only have gamerscore in 1, I will be in 1-9 games list.

Also in completion there was an error for some people not being including on this leaderboard, that has been fixed as well.

New 3VCE: porschephiliac

ChangeAgent and I would like to announce that porschephiliac has been awarded a 360voice Community Expert (3VCE) badge. 3VCEs are people that have been recognized for their contributions to the 360voice community.

Porschephiliac has been long time active and knowledgeable member in the community, you can see his contributions daily in the forums and comments on blogs.

If you are wondering what this 3VCE business is, check out the FAQ.

Keeping forum members in sync

There was a time... not so long ago... when you could sign up for a forum account without having a blog account... For those days are but distant in our past... be this the future... where forum and blog walk hand in hand!

So we just went through and cleaned up the mess... there were hundreds of spam accounts and such in the forum which we have nuked out. In fact we nuked out all accounts that were not valid gamertags in the blog system. (if this sounds over-complicated, it is... apologies... ignore our dust.)

If you were one of the casualties, we apologize... Simply get an Xbox Live Silver account and re-register. Having a valid Xbox Live gamertag (silver or gold level) is required for some things we will be launching shortly... hopefully shortly... and we had to clean up the data this evening to continue testing.

ChangeAgent's 10k Celebration - Game Over Man!

Here it is. The final week of the MS Points giveaway. 287 people left blog comments. From those the winner is:

Lord Jaha

That means 1600 MS points and the coveted Contest Winner badge!

 Here is the final list of everyone. A special congrats to all the winners!

Sept 17, 2007 - CaptainMayhem88
Sept 24, 2007 - ML7
Oct 1, 2007
- ToxicMarlin
Oct 8, 2007 - dmd 23
Oct 15, 2007 - Y2Kevin
Oct 22, 2007 - Surlaw The Mai
Oct 29, 2007 - Lord Jaha

Is this the first time you are hearing about ChangeAgent's 10K Gamerscore Celebration? Read what the rules were! Who knows, maybe we will do it sometime again! It was fun!

(click the title of this post to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the contest!)

Changed server time to PST

Tonight I changed the front-end server that runs the site from EST to PST. I needed to do this to start keeping a few things more consistent with the nightly blog update process. If anyone notices some funkiness, don't be alarmed. In some cases comments and forum posts might be out of order until the timezone catches up in three hours.

So don't think you are time traveling or anything...

(if you are time traveling, click the title of this post to leave a comment about how you are doing that, because I want to know too.)

For the first time ever...

This morning I woke up and an amazing event has taken place... there were zero support emails in my inbox. Of course I had to immediately send a test email to make sure nothing broke... and it is working. :) So I don't know what happened yesterday... but the stars did align and serenity was the result.

In the end, I actually feel a bit lonely this morning. :)

(click the title of this post to leave a comment about why you DIDN'T have any support issues)

Code Night is the bugfix hotness

I spent code night, working on my very long list of bug fixes.  First priority was encoding issues, as they have been causing some duplicated games in folk's blogs.  From our tests, this should now be fixed.  So that was a huge win, starting tomorrow if you see a game twice in a blog entry or some strange characters let us know.

These encoding errors were also holding up your submissions for manual game corrections.  I think this is fixed, we just need to make sure when things kick off tomorrow.  If so, I will work on getting through the backlog as quickly as possible.  Sorry for the long delay, we just didn't want the corrections putting bad data into the system.

That's about it for updates, I have other fixes in the works, that either just need tested or I couldn't get complete tonight.  Also no genre/badge changes tonight, bug fixes took priority as they were pretty critical at this point.

Trapper has been working on a new feature that we plan to roll out the beginning of November. At that point we will let you in on what it is... and why we have had to keep it sorta secret for so long... but it should be fun. We don't want to over hype it... but we think it will bring a fun new dimension to the site... it is pretty cool that it is getting so close.

Weekly wrap-up coming

Just a quick note, the weekly re-cap will be appearing today... it was delayed due to some small timing issues with some of our server work... I will run them as soon as the rest of today's jobs are finished.

Also, we are seeing duplicated when merging titles in the presence feed with the gamercard feed... the duplicates won't really hurt, and we figured it is better to have duplicates than to miss people's gaming!

On a personal note, my parents are in town the next two weeks so I will be doing my best to keep up with support requests, but there might be a bit of a lag as I balance work, site, and family! Sometimes I feel like one of those people with the sticks spinning all those plates on them... but the plates are actually dump trucks... and the sticks are much stronger... because they would have to be to hold up the dump trucks instead of just plates.

ChangeAgent's 10k Celebration - Week 6

Here we go... getting down to the end. Another week... another 345 people left blog comments. From those the winner is:

Surlaw The Mai

That means 1600 MS points and the coveted Contest Winner badge!

Only ONE (1) chance left to win! So find someone's blog with comments enabled and leave them a comment today!

Sept 17, 2007 - CaptainMayhem88
Sept 24, 2007 - ML7
Oct 1, 2007
- ToxicMarlin
Oct 8, 2007 - dmd 23
Oct 15, 2007 - Y2Kevin
Oct 22, 2007 - Surlaw The Mai
Oct 29, 2007

Is this the first time you are hearing about ChangeAgent's 10K Gamerscore Celebration? Read the rules!

(click the title of this post to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the contest!)

Memory issue on our database server

We had a DIMM failure on our front-end database server. The site is down for a moment to swap it out. We should be back shortly.

Update seconds later...

Of course, right after I get around to posting this blog entry about the outage, the replacement is complete and everything is back online. Sweet! For once, something that was suppose to go quick actually went quick! What universe is this?

In the wild: Rock band

It looks like Rock Band has made its first appearance in the blogs... I am personally looking forward to Guitar Hero III more than rock band (because the instrument takes up less space)... honestly I can't see my wife agreeing to let me set up a drum kit in the living room. :)

Anyone out there picking up Rock Band on day one?

(click the title of this post to leave a comment)

ChangeAgent's 10K Celebration - Week 5

Sorry for the delay this morning... I woke up with a fierce cold and just went back to bed. I just woke back up and remembered that we needed to announce a winner!!! 304 people left blog comments this week... and from those the winner is:

Y2Kevin

That means 1600 MS points and the coveted Contest Winner badge!

There are still two (2) chances left to win! So find someone's blog with comments enabled and leave them a comment today!

Sept 17, 2007 - CaptainMayhem88
Sept 24, 2007 - ML7
Oct 1, 2007
- ToxicMarlin
Oct 8, 2007 - dmd 23
Oct 15, 2007 Y2Kevin
Oct 22, 2007
Oct 29, 2007

Is this the first time you are hearing about ChangeAgent's 10K Gamerscore Celebration? Read the rules!

(click the title of this post to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the contest!)

Xbox Live experiencing issues...

We have been seeing some issues with Xbox Live this afternoon. Whether it will hurt our updates tomorrow still remains to be seen. Watch this space for any updates as to tomorrow's streaks, blog entries, etc.

The site itself might run slower as it attempts to call gamer pics and game tiles... so thank you for your patience.

Update 7:22pm CT

As far as I can tell, everything went back to normal an hour or so after I made this post. I haven't seen any other issues... so I don't think we are going to do anything special for the nightly jobs.

(click the title of this post to leave a comment)

Katamari in the Wild

Beautiful Katamari has appeared for the first time in someone's blog.  If you haven't at least checked out the demo I recommend it.  I really enjoyed this game on the Playstation and would recommend it to most folks as it's very unique and addicting. 

Speaking of unique games, one of my favorite games Puzzle Quest is now on the arcade.  This is such an addicting and solid game.  Some people may think it's expensive for 1200 points, or $15.  However this game was $30 on Nintendo DS and will be $30 on the Wii.  This is the cheapest version you can buy, and it is the only version with Achievements and in HD.  I have spent over 100+ hours on the DS version, and still plan to play a lot more on Xbox.  I think it's one of the best values on the arcade right now.

Okay off my soap box for now, I am just really am glad we are getting unique games on 360 and think others should check them out and support them!

Chug, chug, chug

Blogs and things are a little behind today. Our automatic-job-trigger-machine got un-automatic which resulted in manual ignition. So don't worry... we have all the data and are just getting caught up with the processing. Look for blogs and all that jazz shortly.

Code Night Results

Lets get this weeks genre updates out of the way, we made the following additions to the genres:

  • FPS - Bioshock, Halo 3
  • RPG - Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Two Worlds
  • Fighting - Fatal Fury Special
  • Sports - NHL 2k8, NHL 08
  • Puzzle - Puzzle Fighter HD

That's it for the week, no games have been removed or new genres added.

Also I got the game charts back in order for the most part.  I am still making a few tweaks but they are almost complete.   Finally I had to make some additional tweaks for the data pulls to make sure we weren't missing anyone, had a typo in the code, and it seems to be working a lot better.  So hopefully we won't see any missing blog entries in a few days.

Thats it for this week, hope to see ya'll online... probably Halo 3 since it seems that is what everyone is playing.

Double-pulling the data

Hi everyone,

A few people have been reporting that they are missing entries in their blogs. This is because the feeds that we use from Microsoft have been a little spotty and when we ask what games you played, the feed responds that you do not exist. This is a problem! :)

So Steve has worked hard to put together a system for doing redundant pulls. We tested it last night and miraculously it told us that no one missed an entry. We double checked it and the logic looks correct... so either the feeds have gotten a lot better last night, or something strange happened. We took a spin through the data and everyone looks correct... but we aren't believing our own eyes on this one.

So if you get a chance, and you happen to read this we need you to inform us of the following:

If you received a blog entry for October 8 (10/8/2007) and DID NOT receive one for October 9 (10/8/2007) please email us at mail@360voice.com. This is ONLY for people that meet the above condition. If you are missing other days, you can email us to have that fixed, but we are really interested in people who have an entry yesterday, but not today.

Thank you for your help!

(click the title of this post to leave a comment)

ChangeAgent's 10k Celebration - Week 4

What time is it? Time to announce this week's winner! 347 people left blog comments this week... and from those the winner is:

dmd 23

That means 1600 MS points and the coveted Contest Winner badge!

There are still three (3) chances left to win! So find someone's blog with comments enabled and leave them a comment today!

Sept 17, 2007 - CaptainMayhem88
Sept 24, 2007 - ML7
Oct 1, 2007
- ToxicMarlin
Oct 8, 2007 - dmd 23
Oct 15, 2007 (next drawing)
Oct 22, 2007
Oct 29, 2007

Is this the first time you are hearing about ChangeAgent's 10K Gamerscore Celebration? Read the rules!

(click the title of this post to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the contest!)

Presence Down

Hey folks presence is currently down for everyone, so any demos and betas will not display in your blogs.  We have been dealing with a few character issues (although we knocked it out every where else).  However the perfomance of the feeds and that old server just aren't holding up with our growing user base.  I will get an update out as soon as I know more.

Second note, working on some badge updates, so some of your badges (genres) maybe down for a bit.  Sorry for breaking your stuffs. =)

Major Nelson's call for comments

Major Nelson posted a call for comments on his blog. He will be speaking with the "higher-ups" about where to go with Microsoft services. Here is what I put in the comments:

Like Jon Maddox said: More APIs.

360voice.com is in the XCDP... that program should be expanded with dedicated support and business development resources. Offer a license tier and provide an SLA.

MS is outsourcing game innovation with the XNA Creators Club so why not outsource Xbox.com innovation and Xbox Live online innovation by offering more advanced data APIs?

Expand the gamercard web service.
Expand the presence web service.
Add an achievement web service.
Add a game detail service.
Add LiveID verification services.

Let us build real businesses with real value off this data.

Turn Xbox.com into a unifying hub for community offerings. Turn it into a partner channel just like the 3rd party developers behind Sharepoint, Office, etc.

Turn Xbox Live into a platform of community development, centered on the Xbox and powered by the talented developers from the community empowered by MS  data services.

We are ready to work with Microsoft Major. We want to make this happen.

Read his post

I really don't think Microsoft knows what they are sitting on. What they are doing with the XCDP is unheard of in the game industry. If they were to turn Xbox Live into a development platform, just think of the development talent that would flock to the Xbox and future consoles running on Xbox Live. We already have fun with the limited data provided. I think Facebook and other major sites have proven that if you provide an API, you are golden.

(click the title of this post to leave a comment and let me know what you think!)

Status Update

Hey folks, Fatty Chubs here!  Busy few days with the server move and traveling, just wanted to get an update in. 

First kind of techy stuff: It's been quite a ride getting on the new servers, not only does switching bring unique challenges, we decided to try and fix anything we haven't been happy with for the last year.  So stuff that threw us for a loop, like Sonic the Hedgehog and SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (they are different games, makes total sense!)  We have been trying to fix with the move.  We've been doing good (I like to think), but any major changes you make in a database, it ends up causing all sorts of other changes.  So we've been fixing stuff with scripts and in some cases by hand.  So if you see something you know is not right, like Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball in the family genre, let us know.  You guys have been very helpful in this regard.

No so Techy Stuff:  Games list are working, and you should have all your data, correct dates, and owned/want to play list.  Leaderboards are caught up and should be right, but if something looks off let us know.  Badges ( I know you've been skimming this looking for Badge info ).  Yeah I said Badges, they are almost back, most of them are processing, a few have to make some code tweaks and will be back soon, then we can start doing updates, next week-ish hopefully.

What's Next:  Game stats like distribution charts, and number of players charts and lists are still being fixed/tweaked.  I should be able to spend time this weekend getting that up and running a little better.   Then just tweaking existing features, making sure the speed is there, and get stuff running earlier in the day (we are running a lot by hand to test).  Then we can start talking about the new features, we have been putting off for the server move, even super secret ones!

So thanks for all the understanding and help finding bugs with the server move.  I am excited to be where we are and where we are headed!   No I can't tell you the super secret feature.

Day Four of the new servers

Things are looking good. Still a few outstanding issues that we hope to have cleaned up today:

  1. Run badges for the first time since the move so people get streaks/play style/genres back.
  2. Fix the total games stats on the games page.
  3. Fix the support tools so that we can do gamertag changes and blog corrections.

Everything else is running fast! I was even able to turn off prevention of spiders. The site runs so good Google and Yahoo can spider it as much as they want!

There is still no time table on bringing back presence as ever since the launch of Halo 3, the presence feeds have been performing extremely poorly. So right now the site is NOT counting demos/betas/back compat, but funny enough we haven't gotten any complaints... because in the past it was the Halo 3 beta, the cod 4 beta, and Halo 2 that we were mainly trying to track... and with Halo 3 out, everyone is playing that! So that makes our lives a little less hectic on the support front.

Thank you again to everyone for your help tracking down bugs and for being patient with Steve and I.   

ChangeAgent's 10K Celebration - Week 3

What time is it? Time to start the week, but also time to give away more points! Week #2 of the gamerscore celebration is in the books... 265 people left blog comments this week... and from those the winner is:

ToxicMarlin

That means 1600 MS points and the coveted Contest Winner badge!

There are still four (4) chances left to win! So find someone's blog with comments enabled and leave them a comment today!

Sept 17, 2007
Sept 24, 2007
Oct 1, 2007

Oct 8, 2007 (next drawing)
Oct 15, 2007
Oct 22, 2007
Oct 29, 2007

Is this the first time you are hearing about ChangeAgent's 10K Gamerscore Celebration? Read the rules!

(click the title of this post to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the contest!)

Day Three of the new servers

Things are running pretty great on the new servers. We still have a few data issues to repair. Thank you everyone who wrote in about them.

  1. The number of days played is wrong
    We have all the games you played, but our calculation for the number of days that you played it was flawed when we re-ran all the stats. So we have to recalculate those. It is about half done right now. So don't worry... you will get the number of days that you played back.
  2. Leaderboards, Badges, etc.
    Because many of our leaderboards and badges run off days played, we haven't processed those yet. We will try and get them in as soon as we can.

I will be announcing the winner of the Week 3 gamer points later in the day as I have to run and catch the train right now!

Update 3:26pm CT

Both Steve and I are at the Adobe MAX 2007 conference in Chicago today, so support and work on the site is a bit delayed today. Blogs are running (most important!) and the rest of the stats should follow as we find time and bandwidth on the wifi between sessions!

Most popular for September 2007

It was a challenging month for us with the site... but we still managed to put together a good battle on the Most Popular blog list:

  1. jcnet *
  2. GuvmentCheese *
  3. cc99999 *
  4. Major Nelson
  5. Misha LinGhan *
  6. ZeroDesolation *
  7. Fshguy *
  8. StripClubDj
  9. the dren *
  10. ChangeAgent *
  11. syndelin *
  12. Mr Achievement *
  13. SheNaniGenz 510 *
  14. PSonic *
  15. frankie
  16. GameSpotting *
  17. COBAIN x87x *
  18. Mightymango *
  19. destruktive87 *
  20. Netwin

A good mix of people up there... some new Xboxes, some old ones... Keep the clicks coming!