360voice Dev Blog

The Old Spice Experience Challenge Rewards are coming!

The Old Spice Experience Challenge BETA is about to come to an end. You know what that means? Rewards! Every week, there will be a limited number of rewards available when creating or joining a challenge. As we have said before, there are some restrictions on this, so let's get that out of the way first:

Disclaimer on rewards: No purchase necessary.  The Old Spice Experience Challenge rewards are open to residents of the 50 US/DC, 13 or older at time of entry & who have a 360Voice Full membership & have an Xbox 360 Live Gold membership at time of entry.  Void where prohibited.  Begins 12:01 AM PST on 12/5/07; ends 11:59:59 PM PST on 3/14/08.  See Official Rules in December for details.

The official rules aren't available quite yet... we will post them when they are complete.

For those of you that qualify, here is how it works. Each week a new set of rewards will be available. Each reward belongs to a "tier" and that tier will have a required # of participants and a required duration. The higher the tier, the longer the required duration and the larger the number of required participants. We will be posting a full rewards calendar that maps this all out for you this weekend. But for now, here is a list of the prizes to get you thinking. This could always change slightly at the last minute.

Week 1
Tier 1 - $20 Amazon.com gift card
Tier 2 - $50 Best Buy gift card
Tier 3 - $100 Best Buy gift card

Week 2
Tier 1 - 1,600 Xbox Live Microsoft Points
Tier 2 - 4,000 Xbox Live Microsoft Points
Tier 3 - 8,000 Xbox Live Microsoft Points

Week 3
Tier 1 - $20 Best Buy gift card
Tier 2 - Xbox Live Gold Membership (1 year)
Tier 3 - 6 month GameFly Subscription

Week 4
Tier 4 - Year long GameFly Subscription

Week 5
Tier 1 - $20 Amazon.com gift card
Tier 2 - $50 Best Buy gift card
Tier 3 - $100 Best Buy gift card

Week 6
Tier 1 - 1,600 Xbox Live Microsoft Points
Tier 2 - 4,000 Xbox Live Microsoft Points
Tier 3 - 8,000 Xbox Live Microsoft Points

Week 7
Tier 1 - $20 Best Buy gift card
Tier 2 - Xbox Live Gold Membership (1 year)
Tier 3 - 6 month GameFly Subscription

Week 8
Tier 4 - Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

So the way you have to think about this is you can choose to do lots of short tier 1 challenges, or you can try the longer challenges with bigger rewards. BUT, you can only win 1 reward from each tier... so if you win a Tier one challenge, you will be UNABLE to participate in another tier 1 challenge. You will have to be in Tier 2, 3 or 4.

The quantity of each reward is not locked down yet, but let's just say there will be LOTS and LOTS of opportunities for everyone to get in on the action thanks to Old Spice!

So until you hear different from me... December 5th, 2007 is the day the first rewards will be available for creating challenges. Have your people lined up in advance. You don't secure the reward for competition until you launch the challenge... you can't just leave it there pending forever and you can't launch until you get the minimum number of people! First come first serve... but I have faith... you gamers are pretty organized people. ;)

If this is the first time you are hearing about the Old Spice Experience Challenge powered by 360voice, go read up on it! Better yet, go create a 3-day challenge to get acclimated.

If you feel confused... don't be. The official rules will spell all this out nice and clear. You can always click the title of this post to leave a comment as well! We like comments.

Find gamertags in challenges

While I was messing with some stuff this evening, I added in a search on the challenges page. You can now type in an exact gamertag and see all the pending/active/complete challenges that the gamer has or is participating in. Makes it fun to look up people's past history... it might also be good for strategic planning! You can look up the full history of people in advance and see how they played their other games... the type of trash talk they threw down... did the bluff? Did they play it straight? You have the tool to research that now.

J Allard mentions 360voice!

Ok, is it pathetic that this made my week? I am just getting around to some old podcasts... one of which is Major Nelson interviewing J Allard (HiroProtagonist) as part of the Live is 5 series. At the 40 minute mark, this whole exchange surprised the hell out of me:

J Allard: the other thing is the communities have just been great.
Major: Yeah...
J Allard: Whether it is the guys in the community developer network and what they've done.
Major: Right...
J Allard: 360Achievements, or 360voice or uh...
Major: Those are some good stuff isn't it?
J Allard: It's great stuff! Ya know? It's just mind blowing! We never conceived of that and I hope we open up more data and more APIs for them to do things.

Download the podcast and listen yourself!

I mean really! Out of all the sites! He names us!!! Freakin' awesome!

He sends out a lot of praise to the community in general. And earlier in the podcast he talks about the Zune being able to keep a blog about your music.... if you want us to help with that Mr. Allard... let us know... All we are waiting for is the feeds... zunecantalk.com is already registered (zunevoice was taken boooo!). :)

Updates are running slow today

Hey everyone. Last night xbox.com was pretty flaky so it took longer than normal to get our updates. We are therefore running behind on all the jobs. Look for everything to catch up this afternoon.

Update 2:00pm CT

Just checking in to let you know that blogs are done, stats are done, leaderboards are done... so things are back on track.

Go cast your vote for 360voice and others!

As we previously mentioned, 360voice.com was nominated by Gamertag Radio for community site of the year! The voting is now open, so go vote in all the categories and get a shot at some cool prizes!

You have to be a registered member of Gamertag Radio to vote, but it is a quick and easy forum registration... something I am sure all of you are familiar with by now!

Good luck to everyone that was nominated!

Delete comments from your blog page

Because we rolled back the blog comment filtering, I have added the ability for logged in FULL members to delete Xbox blog comments directly. No longer do you need to go through the blog settings to delete comments. You can do it right off the page. Look for the little red X off to the right of the comment information. This should give all of you a little more control.

This functionality was available for the Old Spice Experience Challenge Trash Talking so I just moved it over to the Xbox blog comments. Easy enough!

Leaderboards display "comments enabled" star

This request came from Syndelin. She wanted us to at a "*" next to the names in the leaderboards to denote which gamers have comments turned on for the Xbox blogs. You ask and you shall receive. We thought this was a great idea so I whipped it up this evening. Check out some of the leaderboards to see it in action... and go leave some comments!

• Achievements
• Challenges
• Completionist: 1 - 9
• Completionist: 10 - 24
• Completionist: 25 - 49
• Completionist: 50 - 99
• Completionist: 100+
• Gamerscore
• Gamerscore Change
• Gamer Tiles
• Games Played
• Streaks

Do you have your comments enabled? You have to be a FULL member. After that you can log in and make the change from your blog settings.

ZeroDesolation grabs Ace Combat Gear!

Congrats to ZeroDesolation who wins the Ace Combat T-Shirt and Hat for leaving a comment on a blog this week. We had over 1100 comments during the short window, pretty impressive! Sorry we couldn't award all of you. Keep the comments coming for more chances to win, the new contest will be posted shortly.

Challenge rank added to the leaderboard gadget

If you have participated and won any Old Spice Experience Challenges, you have been earning score towards the Hail to the King (HTTK) badges. Your score also puts you on the challenge leaderboard. Your current rank is now displayed in your xbox blog in the leaderboard gadget. Scroll down the right-column to see it. If you don't have any challenge score, you won't be on the leaderboard and therefore won't have a rank and won't get a link in that gadget.

Everyone having fun with the challenges so far? Some interesting news:

1. Gary Leeds was the first gamer to win the viral badge by conquering Fatty Chubs in a challenge.
2. Over 400 people have participated in the challenge beta.
3. Over 280,000 points of gamerscore have been earned  in challenges so far!
4. Word on the street is that challenges make you play more! Streaks are going up!
5. Avatar has become a very popular game for winning challenges. :)
6. Reminder: If you are looking for  a challenge or need challengers, post in the Challenge Invite forum.

(click the title of this post to leave a comment about gamerscore challenges!)

Comment filtering disabled by popular demand

Recently I turned on a swear word filter on the blog comments. I had to build one for the challenge comments (for legal reasons) and I figured I would turn it on the blog comments to keep the level of drama down. First of all, it didn't prevent drama ;), second of all, lots of people are complaining about it.

After thinking about it, I remember saying that the blog comments are your space... so as such, you should be able to paint whatever picture of yourself you want in those comments to your Xbox. Therefore, by popular demand, the comment filtering is now off... feel free to swear to your heart's content. However, I do read them all and particularly nasty/racist ones will still get manually deleted by me so my domain doesn't fall into the "bad kids" filter. I reserve that right.

The #10 reason to love Xbox Live

According to xbox.com, the #10 reason to love Xbox Live is 360voice.com! Check out the top 20:

1. 100 Xbox LIVE Arcade games
2. 290 million downloads of gaming and entertainment content
3. 2K Sports
4. 2old2play.com
5. 3 USB ports
6. 3,600+ GamerchiX in 29 countries
7. 300 backward-compatible games
8. 32-bit audio processing
9. 360style.net
10. 360voice.com
11. 3-core CPU
12. 5.1 Dolby surround sound
13. 50+ co-op kids games
14. 500 MHZ ATI graphic processor
15. 8 Million friends and rivals on Xbox LIVE
16. 9 million text and voice messages sent via Xbox LIVE each week
17. 9,000 pieces of gaming and entertainment content on Xbox LIVE Marketplace
18. Acey Bongos
19. achieve360points.com
20. Achievements

Read the whole list... 406 items of goodness...

If you couldn't tell, the list is in alphabetical order... but we will take top 10 anyhow. :) I mean come on... our site is way cooler than 3 USB ports. And I am sorry but Achievements should be number one! But yeah... still #10... w00t.

Sites that Rule: Hawty McBloggy

In the world of a billion blogs and community sites out there, I am always interested to find one with a unique personality and better writing then I can muster.  I have recently started reading HawtyMcBloggy.com and have found it entertaining, well written and mature.  It's got an Xbox 360 focus, and the sole author describes herself as, "I am a geek. I am a gamer. I am a girl."  It's like having a hip artsy friend, you can talk gaming with.  So consider adding it to your daily routine, or RSS reader.

Also she has created the ultimate Halo card to get for your favorite gamer, it has PG-13 related content but if you are of age I suggest you check it out.

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you are in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving! It is that wonderful time of the year when we all go over to our in-laws house and eat until we pass out... and then wake up and eat again... and a bunch of you are asking "How is that different than any other day in America?" To that I can only answer that on this day we all do it at the SAME TIME!

But seriously... we at 360voice have lots to be thankful for... Our great community, the recent Old Spice sponsorship, and of course Microsoft for building a great console, a great online service, and giving us all the data that makes this site possible.

So Steve and I take this moment to recognize all that and say thank you to everyone and everything that continues to keep this site growing.

Haz you Scene It?

With the holidays coming up, I am always looking for something to play with the family. In my mind, I don't want to stop earning achievements, even when hanging out with the folks on Turkey day, so Scene It? fits the bill perfectly.

I remember sitting in the chat room, watching the E3 press conference, and seeing it announced, and thinking WTF?  I saw it again at PAX, and it was another kind of 'MEH' moment.  However getting it and playing a few games with my wife, I really enjoyed it.  They did a good job of creating questions for every level of knowledge, and a really good job making the games feel fast paced and fun. You aren't stuck watching long load screens or unneeded announcers talking forever with a bunch of jibber jabber (dang you Fuzion Frenzy 2).

The controllers work as advertised, and I didn't realized the big button doubled as a directional pad. I also found you can use the regular controllers, but there really is no need to as you get 4 free ones in the box. The game isn't perfect. There is no online play or leaderboards. Also there are short and long game modes, and a party mode (questions don't stop until you decide to quit), but I feel like there should be more customization available. It's getting pretty strong reviews overall though. Gamespot, one of my favorite sites, really enjoyed it.

With all the great games coming out, you might want to add this to your list of things to try. If you are worried about your hard core gamer rep, don't worry... you already lost that when you played Open Season for the gamerscore.

Blogs and challenge updates delayed

Hey everyone, we purposely delayed the blog and challenge updates today as we are working on getting new data into the system and needed to pause the jobs to ensure that we don't bork anything up with the imports.

So what this means to you is you will get blog updates and challenge updates, just a little later than usual. We are just being extra cautious with the data today and running the jobs manually.

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

Update 10:47am CT

Things are back on track. Blogs are almost finished processing. Thanks for your patience!

Yes we have Genre Updates...

Genre updates have been kind of lost in the mix lately, so we made a few updates. This is far from getting everything up to date, but I figured I would make these before folks started revolting and chaos ensues. We are still working to possibly make some significant changes, moving towards genre badges version 2.0, but for now just a few updates :

Puzzle - Added Tetris Splash
Fighting - Added Virtua Fighter 5
Oddball - Added Beautiful Katamari
Music - Added Guitar Hero III
Family - Added Bee Movie Game
Racing - Added PGR4
FPS - Added The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4

We are listening to suggestions... Sorry if we couldn't get them all in this update! 

Leave Comments Win AC6 SWAG

Okay this week's contest is ready, and now you can win some Ace Combat 6 swag!  The winner will net a Ace Combat T-shirt and hat from the fine folks at Namco.

If you haven't played Ace Combat 6 yet, I suggest you check it out. If you are a fan of the series, I think this is one of the best I have played. If you are new to the series, this is a great introduction. I just finished single player, and I had a blast. I really liked the ability to pick what objectives to choose in the missions, and the game was action packed. There are some pretty epic battles (I can't share without spoilers), but the difficulty and length felt just right. It's good to see the Xbox getting some new series, and some different types of games, so lets support it!  (Sorry for the ugly pic, I am having camera issues)

The Rules

1. All you have to do to be eligible is post a comment to ANY Xbox blog on this site. It doesn't have to be mine. To leave a comment, find any xbox blog with comments enabled and use the comment form under any blog entry. You can always find some blogs with comments by looking in the Top 20 Most Popular List on the 360voice homepage. Anyone with a star (*) next to their name has comments on.

2. When posting a comment on an xbox blog, you have to use your GAMERTAG in the name field... otherwise, I won't know how to track you down. If you use someone elses gamertag, they will win! So don't do that unless you want them to. :)

3. You DO NOT need to be a member of 360voice to leave a comment. Anyone can leave a comment on an Xbox blog so anyone is eligible.

4. I will private messageg you via Xbox live to let you know you won and you can provide your mailing info. If you have a 360voice account, you will also get the Contest Winner badge!!

5. It DOES NOT matter how many comments you leave. Each tag is counted only once... so don't spam the comments.

6.  Only comments posted between 12:01AM (PST) 11/20/2007 and 11:59PM (PST) 11/25/2007 will be eligible.

That's it! Easy enough right? And you get to participate on the site at the same time! Everybody wins yay!  For more information on the AceCombat 6 check out the official site.

360voice nominated by Gamertag Radio for Community site of the year

Steve and I just want to thank the Gamertag Radio team for nominating 360voice for Xbox community site of the year. We are happy to be nominated with our good buddies Squidpunch and Zaam IT at LiveEye!

1. TheLiveEye.com
2. PregameLobby.com
3. XBL10Kclub.com
4. 360voice.com
5. AllGames.com
6. ThumbBandits.com

Head over to Gamertag Radio and listen to the nomination show!

These are some really great communities and we are happy to have been noticed by the GTR team. A special thanks to all of you... our community... which we hear time and time again is the reason people show up and the reason they stay. You all make this a lot of fun...

Where did you get that gamer pic?

During code weekend, we didn't even realize it, but we have been receiving the source of your gamerpic all along... we just haven't been showing it! So I took a few minutes and added this in.

If you hover over anyone's tile in their blog, it will give you a little pop-up menu that tells you the source of the picture. You can click the link of the source to see other pics from that source, our you can click "Who has this tile" to see other gamers who have your pic.

There is also the gamerpic leaderboard where you can check out the most popular pictures of all the members at 360voice as well as sort by the LEAST popular so you can find some choice pictures that not many other people are using. You can filter by source on that board as well.

As with all our data, we can only show the data of our members, so this does not show tiles that no one in the system has. Enjoy!

More Contest Winners!

Congrats to IrishPauly and TX Eegras who will both be receiving SpeedFreek controller accessories!  They were selected out of the approximately 200 folks who left over 500 comments this weekend.  This week's contest will be posted tomorrow.

Code weekend was a blur

  360voice Code Weekend 
  Originally uploaded by Markelz Family

I am sitting here pretty burnt out... as always, 48+ hours of coding can really do a number on you. We have a hole bunch of cool things that we worked on... some visible, some not so visible. We also had Squidpunch fly in and hang out... help us solve some unsolvable problems and shake things up a bit by being the new face in the crowd.

Our biggest accomplishment was all of the code to facilitate prize selection for the Old Spice Experience Challenge that will be coming out of beta soon. You all getting your fill of challenges? There are some pretty insane ones going on... and the amount of gamerscore increases in this first week have been amazing!

I am so beat right now I can barely type... I just finished resurrecting my laptop from the dead. The first day of code weekend, my laptop crashed and wouldn't boot... so I used a backup all weekend. I just got everything back up and running... so I am going to head off to bed. Tomorrow Fatty Chubs and I will compile a list of all the new parts of the site and unleash it upon the world. It is a good mix of visible and non-visible stuff.

I did snap a few pictures (slideshow) during one of the code weekend evenings. I know squid took some too, so we will get those posted when we have 'em.

There are a good number of support emails outstanding. I will get to those sometime tomorrow to, so if you are waiting for an answer from us, don't worry... we will look into it.

People making cool stuff: rwgriersr

We always like to post up the cool stuff people are doing with our API. One such person is rwgriersr who has a version of 360voice running on his iPhone iPod Touch. Check out the photo:

Remember, if you do something cool let us know! We like to hear about this stuff and we also like to pass it along. Also remember to post it to the Community Showcase so other people can see it too!

Blogs will be repaired

Hey everyone! We are aware of an issue with the blogs running last night and not displaying people's games. We are working to fix the issue! Please do not send any more email! We have gotten the message loud and clear! Please! For the love of god to not send any more email! :)

(ok j/k it was THAT much email... but it was a lot. We will work to correct the issue.)

Update 3:33pm CT

Hey all. Today was a bigger melt down than normal due to the fact that our brilliant hosting company lost our backups. So we had to get creative with our streak repairs. They aren't 100% yet... but the blogs are running and we will be getting the streaks all fixed up shortly! So for now... it is safe to call everything back on track... look for complete success by late tonight.

Registration [was] closed while we work

Just a quick note... registration on the site is closed while we optimize one of our large database tables. We hope to have it up shortly! Sorry for any inconvenience!

Update 11/18/2007 1:51am CT

Well things still aren't finished with this massive job but we have coded around it for the time being so registration is now open again. Like always the database is taking it's sweet time... and refuses to obey our commands for speediness. Machines always win.

Win More Free Stuff!

Time for another contest and now there are two chances to win!

KontrolFreeks has given us some SpeedFreek controller accessories for race fans to check out. These little things snap onto your analog stick and are intended to be used with racing titles to give you "quicker and sharper movements, while adding control and precision." This is a weekend challenge, so you got just 3 days to enter!

I was pretty interested in checking these out, as they are low cost and seem a little gimmicky. I tried them with NASCAR, Forza and PGR4. Since I am over-protective with my controllers, I was a little nervous this would scratch up my analog stick, but was surprised it snaps cleanly on and off, and stays nicely in place. When it comes to NASCAR, the wheel was my favorite option, however I did notice a nice improvement using these over just the standard controller. With NASCAR I was forced to make smaller and smoother turns and this gave me a little more relaxed feeling when doing so. With Forza and PGR4 I have gotten pretty used to using the standard controller as I have played these a lot, so the gains weren't as great, but it also felt very comfortable and natural.

So if you want to check these out for yourself, all you have to do is leave a comment in the blog for a chance to win!  We will pick two people at random on Monday, 11/19/2007.

Read the rules below for details on how to make sure you are eligible: 

The Rules

1. All you have to do to be eligible is post a comment to ANY Xbox blog on this site. It doesn't have to be mine. To leave a comment, find any xbox blog with comments enabled and use the comment form under any blog entry. You can always find some blogs with comments by looking in the Top 20 Most Popular List on the 360voice homepage. Anyone with a star (*) next to their name has comments on.

2. When posting a comment on an xbox blog, you have to use your GAMERTAG in the name field... otherwise, I won't know how to track you down. If you use someone elses gamertag, they will win! So don't do that unless you want them to. :)

3. You DO NOT need to be a member of 360voice to leave a comment. Anyone can leave a comment on an Xbox blog so anyone is eligible.

4. I will private msg you via Xbox live to let you know you won and you can provide your mailing info. If you have a 360voice account, you will also get the Contest Winner badge!!

5. It DOES NOT matter how many comments you leave. Each tag is counted only once... so don't spam the comments.

6.  Only comments posted between 12:01AM (PST) 11/16/2007 and 11:59PM (PST) 11/18/2007 will be eligible.

That's it! Easy enough right? And you get to participate on the site at the same time! Everybody wins yay!  For more information on the SpeedFreeks check out the official site.

The Simpsons Game Winner

The contest for EA Games’ The Simpsons Game has come to an end.  During the contest we received over 2500 comments, from over 300 individuals.  The winner is Mightymango!  Although his luck ran out during our gamerscore challenge, he was lucky enough to be drawn randomly to snag this game.  So I in the end he gets back at me for taking home a game I really wanted to play. 

Watch shortly for the next contest, so you can have a chance at stealing more of my toys!  It's so easy, why wouldn't you?  We plan to be doing this on a weekly basis, so keep an eye out for what prizes are available, and just keep the comments going.  Plus your friends like it when you say hi, they get lonely.  Plus you need friends for those hard to get online achievements!  So do it for the kids!

Performance enhancements and LiveScore for challenges!

I put in some pretty cool stuff (i think) this evening. Because we link out to external web services, if the performance of those services goes down, our site can suffer. This has been very true with the presence feed that we get from Microsoft to show your online status (in the upper right of your blog). Sure, there is a time-out on there, but if the page has to wait for the time-out to hit, that slows everything down.

I was messing around with some stuff, and it was too easy to get the presence feed, as well as other external requests to all happen on their own time. So now you will often see the page appear, and then the status will pop-up. Things already feel snappier!

Using the same technology, if you are participating in an Old Spice Experience Challenge, you will now see a LiveScore listed in the progress grid. This gives you the ability to size up your opponents through out the day and know if that gain you stacked up is really going to be enough! No surprises now, just pure strategery!! (they really should make strategery a real world). Also, let me know if it looks like the LiveScore is slowing down the page... it shouldn't... but it might... so if you see that, let me know.

(click the title of this post to leave a comment and let me know if you see a speed increase, and what you think of the LiveScore)

Nightly lock ups... solution is near!

Some of you might have had issues hitting the site around midnight CT. It turns out that our backup technique at the new host was locking the site. We only recently became aware of this issue and will be working on a solution that allows for hot-backups with no downtime. So we apologize for the nightly outage. Turns out it has been going on for sometime.

People are talking, we are listening...

It has been awhile since I did a link dump of the latest 360voice mentions across the web. That is primary because, as our site gracefully ages, we are just plain old news around here! There are some pretty funny ones in here thought. If anything, read the first one on the list... a pretty funny post:

That guy's a maniac
"[An Xbox reviews Halo 3] Amen my little anthropomorphised brother. Amen."

Adult Gaming Enthusiasts
"360Voice.com has a new Game Score Challenge feature that I thought would be fun to give a try."

The Joshua Tree
"Shall we play a game? - Joshua in WarGames"

Gamerscore Blog
"I've [BWOzar] also recently discovered 360voice.com which is a pretty funny site, it computer generates a blog from your 360's perspective based on your gaming activity."

Carsinigin
"An update to the 360voice main blog back on Oct 24th had a comment that they were working on a new feature.   I had a sinking feeling that it would be related to what I was doing at Gamerscoregoal.com."

Bradfucious' other other blog
"Apparently, your Xbox 360 is not just a game machine any more. In fact, it has taken on some of the qualities found in semi-sentient beings..."

The Way of the Web
"I know the service [Xbox Live] is a walled garden, with a small window looking out at Windows Live Messenger, and a skylight from which a feed can escape to sites displaying gamertags, and even blogs written by Xbox 360s. But, like Facebook, it's so comfortable, that trying to escape is like trying to rouse yourself from a comfy armchair after a Sunday roast dinner."

Tunnels of Doom
"I find myself ceaselessly lost in such statistical marvels as the Badge Calculator from 360Voice.com and other data tracking services that make similar use to the public profiles your Xbox presents when connected to the Internet."

AcheaShadow
"This site is great fun, basically you sign up and all the clever coding turns your page into a blog written by your 360..."

81Studios.nl
"Een van de grappigste dingen die ik na de lancering van Xbox360, alweer bijna 2 jaar terug, tegenkwam was 360voice."

I really hate the word blog
"That's definitely ... an interesting concept I guess..."

Global Cop
"Check it out to see whether it is sad because I'm neglecting it, or if it is bragging on all the achievements we've scored together."

Where's Drew?
"I’d totally forgotten that my Xbox 360 had its own blog until today, when I saw it in my “Blog” bookmarks. I decided to take a look at see what it’d been up to."

Phronk.com
"...my Xbox is still blogging as if nothing's changed."

Nosuch.org
"It is a sorry state of affairs when my Xbox 360 is blogging more than I do."

Shaun's Blog
"This place is great :) a blog just for your 360."

Ramblings of the Mad Cow
"I also broke down and got my 360 profile it’s own blog, since it seems to be all the rage."

Sarawanan Ravindran
"...apparently my 360 has been blogging about my gaming habits."

Thunderblog
"It’s no real use now but my xbox 360 does have a blog at 360 voice"

Kar-El
"Very, very soon computers will become self aware. And I for one welcome our new digital overlords."

That's it for now! Remember if you post about us in your blog... especially if it is some sort of review article, let us know so we can link back to you as thanks.

Code Weekend, THIS WEEK!

Steve (Fatty Chubs) and I (ChangeAgent) are happy to announce a 360voice code weekend coming up for this weekend. Steve is flying into Chicago on Thursday... we will be coding all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (with some game breaks of course). The primary target for this code weekend is to finish adding the prizing module to the Old Spice Experience Challenge... this will allow you all to create gamer score challenges for real prizes!

If you haven't heard about our open beta of the Old Spice Experience Challenge feature, check it out here.

So don't expect too many site enhancements. We have a big back log of great suggestions and once we get this Old Spice Experience Challenge knocked out the door, we plan to turn our attention to those things once more.

As an added bonus, we have David Larrabee (Squidpunch) from 360friendspot.com and Liveye.com fame coming in for the weekend as well to hang out, code and talk about the future of our sites and the XCDP. It should be fun having someone else around to shake things up a bit and add a few new ideas to the pot.

As always, we will be blogging the entire thing... letting you know what we are breaking, what we are fixing, and anything new you can check out... although most of the new stuff won't be available for public view until we officially launch with prizes. So stay tuned!

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

Xbox Live maintenance tonight

As many of you have heard, Xbox Live is going down again tonight... right in the middle of our nightly data pulls. And it really hasn't been running all that hot today either... so they are definitely having some major problems. We will be working the graveyard shift once again to ensure that it has a little affect on the site as possible... no promises though. :)

Streaks will be turned off for the third day in a row though... so don't be too alarmed if you see a non-play entry in your blog. More updates as things go down... so stay tuned.

Update 11:41pm CT

Ha, looks like this is what happened with our host last night. They did fail over to the generator eventually, but they couldn't do it instantly because the infrastructure that carried power between the backup system and the primary data center was messed up in the accident... so they had to manually re-route cable to get the power back to the data center. I can only imagine the chaos...

Update Nov 13, 2007 8:45am CT

Three cheers for Fatty Chubs who has been working to make sure the data was captured from MS despite the outage. We are processing it now... hopefully blogs and challenge updates will begin appearing in the next few hours.

Xbox Live still sending us troubling data

Things seemed like they were back on track, however last night we saw some extrememly poor performance on the feeds. Fatty Chubs is working feverishly to correct the problem and get the updates started. You should start seeing challenge updates and blogs within the next few hours... watch this blog for more updates!

Update 9:44am CT

Challenges have been upgraded... blogs are running. We have received some support requests around incorrect streaks... some people received TWO days added to their streaks yesterday instead of ONE day. We will be removing the extra day from those people sometime today.

Xbox Live issues - Save our streaks!

Hi everyone. Xbox Live has been up and down for many of you all day. We will be disabling the streak counters tonight... so everyone gets a free pass... So if you see an entry tomorrow saying that you didn't play...don't worry... it won't hurt your streak. I will try and put a little note in there too so that it makes it clear your streak is still alive.

Update 8:40pm CT

It appears that the Xbox Live outage is also preventing us from determining if you have a Gold account or Silver account which is blocking access to joining challenges. There isn't much we can do there... we hope the live issues are resolved ASAP. We check it real time so that people can upgrade their account and immediately join the challenge... maybe we need to rethink that for situations like this.

Update 11/11/2007 8:06am CT

It appears the outage caused a variety of issues with our data capture... and as luck would have it, there was a power outage at our data center... so we are now running on diesel generators! Good times... anyhow... there is some corrupted data and we are working through cleaning it out to get things back on track... you might see some missing pictures... some missing gamerscores... some missing entries... some missing streak updates... all of which are in the process of being investigated and repaired... thanks for your patience out there...

Update 11/11/2007 7:06pm CT

Things are pretty cleaned up at this point and measures have been taken to prevent THIS version of outage from greatly disrupting us again... it seems every outage is different!

Old Spice Experience Challenge, personalized!

Steve and I are happy to announce the "big feature" that we have been working on for the past few months. It is a story that starts over a year ago with us getting a mention in the Washington Post, which lead to some helpful contacts, which lead to more contacts, which lead to some conference calls, which then resulted in more conference calls, pitches, paperwork, lawyers, creative discussions, LOTS of coding (did I mention lots of coding?)... and BAM!... here we are...

360voice is happy to announce the BETA launch of a new gamer score challenge feature, sponsored by Old Spice. For the complete rules and requirements, check out the Terms & Conditions.

In short, you create a challenge... pass the code out to the people you want to compete against, and see who can gain the most gamer score during the duration that you have chosen. While the challenge is active, you will get daily blog entry updates, a progress chart, and a way to trash-talk your rivals. Oh and did we mention there are some badges and a challenge leaderboard?

So jump right in and check it out! Create a challenge and invite your friends, or check out the challenge board for active/complete challenges that have already taken place during our closed alpha program.

Remember, this is a BETA! Our goal here is to make sure everything is working behind the scenes... Things will get much bigger when we turn on prizing challenges! Yep that is right!

Soon you will be competing in challenges for real prizes! Old Spice will be helping us give away tens of thousands of dollars in prizes... there will be hundreds of prizes to compete for with your friends each week!

Disclaimer on prizes: No purchase necessary.  The Old Spice Experience Challenge prizes are open to residents of the 50 US/DC, 13 or older at time of entry & who have a 360Voice Full membership & have an Xbox 360 Live Gold membership at time of entry.  Void where prohibited.  Begins 12:01 AM PST on 12/5/07; ends 11:59:59 PM PST on 3/14/08.  See Official Rules in December for details.

Watch this blog for more details shortly!

It is going to be a fun holiday season and we at 360voice would just like to extend a sincere thanks to Old Spice for choosing to invest in our site and our community. We would also like to thank the team at Play for helping us make all this happen. Cheers guys and gals!

Also a special thanks to the ALPHA Test team who helped us the last month with 'Project Red Rabbit':

3VCEs
andyg8180
DoICi
Fshguy
IceWarm
Major Flankage
Mr Achievement
porschephiliac
Ten Stitches
Wink

Community Members (First wave)
AbsurdG3nius
Aggressive Mold
Bajan Elite
Boardgameplayer
Cormyre
Dark Cell NZ
destruktive87
Duminakan89
EditorEMB
Farfin Noogan
GTCv Deimos
GuvmentCheese
HeNaniGenz 510
I Am Anduril
illum1na
JamJez
Ken Adams NSA
kingofbigmac
LqDFx
OneTrikStory
Propapa Smurf
RHCP 87
RuKaMiR
SheNaniGenz 510
SONOF A VET
Syndelin
T360UK SMILEY
The Third End
treydizzl
ZeroDesolation
zZ Dr K Zz

Community Members (Second wave)
cc99999
Cluskevird
FROSTYSMOOTH
IrishPauly
Jcnet
Lil Haf Dead
Mightymango
Misha LinGhan
squidpunch
SoupyC
The Dren
Vynn

(if you read down this far) Enjoy the new feature! Click the title of this post to leave a comment about your initial reaction to the Old Spice Experience Challenge BETA, powered by 360voice!

Update 3:57am CT

Added a prize disclaimer to the above post.

Do you GFW?

Now that Gears of War has been released for Windows, are you going to be playing it?  I haven't gotten my copy yet, but I got a chance to play it at this years PAX.  I tried it with both the keyboard/mouse and Xbox 360 controller.  Both played well, but  I have to say I have really been enjoying using my Xbox 360 controller with Halo 2 and Shadowrun and I will be playing Gears PC the same way.  I grabbed a wireless receiver for windows so I can use the same wireless controller and headset.  Plus now I can play minesweeper with the controller and it shakes when a bomb explodes.  You laugh, but I know some of you will try it! 

I have also been impressed with Shadowrun for the fact that both versions share the same achievements and online play, it's pretty seamless and I hope to see more of this.

So who's playing on Windows?  Is it for the additional achievements?  Do you want to see more integration? Do you feel like you are cheating on your Xbox?  Feel free to sound off in the forums. 

Creative comment uses: more contests!

A few days ago we put up a post about HeNaniGenz 510 and his creative use of the blog comments to host a trivia competition (which is still going on!). Another 360voice member, EA Sargonas, is getting in on the act with a combo-cross-promotion-contest and giving away free games!

Want to win a free Xbox 360 EA game of your choice? Or how about one of two 1600 Microsoft point gift cards for Xbox live?

Did I get your attention? Good.. thought I might have ;) Gaming-wiki.com is kicking off a new promotion for the month of November. Now though the end of the month, anyone who replies to the personal blog of EA Sargonas with a link that points to a NEW article you have posted on gaming-wiki.com will be put into the drawing.

Read the forum for more info

Please note this contest is not run or operated by 360voice and we are not responsible for any of the prizes that EA Sargonas is giving out. He is doing this with his own time, resources, and money... and we applaud him for doing so! It is just great that the 360voice community is giving back to itself!

You also get to help out a great site like gaming-wiki build its content! In fact, I just noticed that there isn't a 360voice entry over there! Someone needs to go create it for us! I could create it, but it would be much more fun to read if the community works together to create something... :)

(click the title of this post to comment on comment contests, wikis, etc)

Win the Simpsons Game!

Want to win a copy of  EA Games’ The Simpsons Game? One lucky individual will be drawn at random from everyone who leaves a comment on any 360voice.com blog from November 7th through the 14th. 

Read the rules below for details on how to make sure you are eligible:

The Rules

1. All you have to do to be eligible is post a comment to ANY Xbox blog on this site. It doesn't have to be mine. To leave a comment, find any xbox blog with comments enabled and use the comment form under any blog entry. You can always find some blogs with comments by looking in the Top 20 Most Popular List on the 360voice homepage. Anyone with a star (*) next to their name has comments on.

2. When posting a comment on an xbox blog, you have to use your GAMERTAG in the name field... otherwise, I won't know how to track you down. If you use someone elses gamertag, they will win! So don't do that unless you want them to. :)

3. You DO NOT need to be a member of 360voice to leave a comment. Anyone can leave a comment on an Xbox blog so anyone is eligible.

4. I will private msg you via Xbox live to let you know you won and you can provide your mailing info. If you have a 360voice account, you will also get the Contest Winner badge!!

5. It DOES NOT matter how many comments you leave. Each tag is counted only once... so don't spam the comments.

6.  Only comments posted between 12:01AM (PST) 11/07/2007 and 11:59PM (PST) 11/14/2007 will be eligible.

That's it! Easy enough right? And you get to participate on the site at the same time! Everybody wins yay!  For more information on the Simpsons game check out the official site at www.ea.com/simpsons

360voice in D+PAD Magazine

Jump over to the D+PAD Magazine site and check out Issue 03! 360voice has a link on page 61 as part of a discussion about achievements.

360voice.com
360Voice.com tracks your Xbox 360’s movements, writing a humorous daily blog on the previous day’s activity, as well as offer a whole host of intriguing statistics about your playtime.

Go read the issue! #03 (PDF)

Everyone should be supporting D+PAD. They are doing great work over there... for free!

Remember the shirts? Customize!

A while back we announced a new link on your blog to buy a customized shirt. I have to say I have been quite surprised how popular they have been! I hope you are all sporting them with pride! In fact it would be great to see some of you in some pictures with your shirts... at school... at the bar... whatever... post them to the forum.

However Y2Kevin went a bit further and customized his shirt using the Zazzle shirt designer. Check out what is possible... black... custom slogan.... fun stuff!

Remember, anyone can buy a custom shirt straight from your blog page. Look for the link, and remember you can customize it!

Database issues fixed ( I think )

Database errors should now be fixed, but if you see any errors let us know.  You could always test it on a random blog, or checking out someones gamerscore graph.

Database timeout issues

You may be seeing some errors that say "MySQL server went away". We are currently working to resolve the issues. Thank you for your patience!

Creative comments?

Do you have a creative way you use your blog comments? Tell us about it! We are interested in knowing and sharing all of the great ways people are using their comments.

Here is one:

For five random days this month (November 2007), HeNaniGenz 510 is giving away Microsoft Points to 360voice members that correctly answer his trivia questions posted to the blog comments.

Read more

HeNaniGenz 510 is going this with his own money! Isn't that awesome? Go read the rules and join the contest here!

So again, if you are doing cool things with your comments, whether it is writing articles, holding contests, managing competitions, or anything else, let us know and we will blog about it for you. Creativity deserves to be noticed!

Remember, comments are a feature available to FULL members. So if you are wondering how to turn them on, make sure you are a full member, and then activate them in your blog settings.

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

Halloween Game Stats

Halloween brought some interesting game stats to the table.

1. Halo 3 had a nice weekday showing with 2,300 more 360voicers playing than yesterday thanks to a zombified play list.  Although Halo 3 is already the 3rd most played game ever here, its numbers are slowing dropping from insane to great... time for some DLC?


2. Speaking of DLC, Pinball FX got a free table and that increased the amount of players 10 fold over the previous day!  It's a fun table too, and free is always good!


3. Even with Guitar Hero III out, easily besting Orange Box for the number 2 spot, Guitar Hero II continues to stick around the list and put up numbers similar to Gears of War.  Seems you all like to ROCK!


4. The sole Xbox Live title release this week Mutant Storm Empires did good coming it at number four, but I suspect all the other great things going on halloween hurt the numbers. I expect more people checking this game out over the next few days.


5. Mass effect hit the system for the first time today, but for achievement lookers sadly they are still hidden. 


6. Halloween was a good day for other new games as well with 3 others hitting the system for the first time: Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Beowolf and Smackdown vs Raw 2008.

I guess we got more treats then tricks this halloween! 

Top 20 Most Popular Blogs for October 2007

The month of October 2007 is over. The following people had the most popular blogs:

1. jcnet *
2. cc99999 *
3. Major Nelson
4. StripClubDj
5. Misha LinGhan *
6. GuvmentCheese *
7. the dren *
8. PSonic *
9. ChangeAgent *
10. Mightymango *
11. SheNaniGenz 510 *
12. Fshguy *
13. ZeroDesolation *
14. GameSpotting *
15. HeNaniGenz 510 *
16. porschephiliac *
17. doadea *
18. peters8570 *
19. syndelin *
20. Netwin

How does one get on this list? By leaving lots of comments and getting people talking! There weren't a ton of new faces this month, but there were a few... welcome all!