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Here it is... the top 20 most popular blogs for May 2008. A few new faces on the list!
* means comments are enabled! Go wish some congrats!
What do you have to say about that?
If you head over to your games settings page (login required) you will see that we added some new functionality to the page. Previously you could only mark what games you wanted to play, and the games that you owned - but we have expanded that to include games you have rented and games you have traded in as well.
Also you might notice that you can now finally cast your own vote on all the games you have played, it's a simple voting scheme; simply thumbs up or thumbs down instead of a big huge scentific formula to create some random number which indicates your level of enjoyment. What it really boils down to is you like it or you don't.
Finally the page is now sortable, so you are able to sort your game list in a number of different ways so you can find the ones you haven't rated easier, or perhaps you want to rate only your more recently played games - etc.
Once we get some data flowing with these new data elements we will be bubbling them up to the games page for the acutal game - so you can some of these stats in an overall way - such as how many people rented or traded in Avatar: TLA: TBE instead of actually buying it, and some data related to how many thumbs (up or down) a game recieves.
Finally I would like to claim victory over Fatty Chubs, as this was mentioned on the forums as a challenge of who would finish first, "Fatty's "Badges 2.0" vs Squids "Games Rating System". To be fair rating your games is a bit less involved than badges 2.0, but I will take a win anyway i can get them!
As always click the title if you wish to leave a comment - cheers!
With our merger with GamerDNA there is a need to share data back and forth across the two databases. In order to do this effectively we needed some sort of service that could be queried to say if the nightly jobs were finished and it was safe to pull data. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that this would be an important capability for all of our community developers as well! So here it is, a service you can use to check on job status:
360voice.jobs
Description: Allows you to check the progress of the daily 360voice system updates. Use this to track the system if you need specific data at specific times each day. Querying this service will allow you to schedule dependent jobs.
Arguments:
date (optional) (format: YYYMMDD)
Sample:
http://www.360voice.com/api/jobs.php
http://www.360voice.com/api/jobs.php?date=20080529
This service and more, are covered in the API docs. Go check em' out and build something awesome!
As you might notice, the service is written in PHP instead of ASP... that is because Fatty Chubs wrote it... So this is the first PHP based service we have... it doesn't really mean anything... just interesting to notice!
We are giving away 25 Battlefield Bad Company Demo Codes courtesy of EA. The code will get you access to the demo on 5/29 a whole week earlier then the demo release June 5th.
To be eligible submit a comment on any comment enabled blog, that contains the words "Bad Company" before 8:00AM EST May 29th, 2008. We will pick 25 people at random at 8:00 and send the codes out via e-mail. The demo lets you check out both single player and the multplayer gold rush mode.
The full game ships 6/23 and you can also preorder at some retailers and get an early access code for the demo as well. Good luck and happy fragging.
UPDATE: We are cutting off entries and emailing codes out now. There was some confusion on where to leave comments it looks like. Entries were supposed to be made to any 360voice.com member blog, such as mine. However if you did leave a comment to this blog entry, with a valid e-mail we will still count it, sorry for the confusion.
I also got to play the demo myself a bit, and after a game or two, I was starting to see the value of the multiplayer. The classes and vehicles, should add some fun gameplay in well populated games. Good demo, if you didn't win you should at least check it out when it releases.
We have a scheduled maintenance window on our database servers today, for around 5:00PM EST. We expect a small downtime of 5-15 minutes if all goes well. Once back up, you won't notice any changes, but it will help us with some performance tweaks and future enhancements to the site.
So if we appear to be gone, or sluggish today, thanks for your patience. We will hopefully be back... server maintenance makes me nervous, I hope no bunnies get in there and nuke something.
Update 10:40am ET
Alright so... it looks like our scheduled downtime at 5pm actually happened RIGHT NOW! (yay)... it looks like they upgraded our servers way before we were ready... not the jobs are hosed... replication is down... freakin' rad. So we are trying to bring it back from the dead. We will update as we know more.
Update 12:34am ET
Still working on it... I (Change) had to rewrite the challenge updater due to changes in mySQL 5.0 and that is running... we will probably have to reg blogs. Everything else is on hold until we can get replication back up... they are still dragging their feet on it... so... things continue.
Update 1:12pm ET
Replication is back, so comments, microblogs, and other content entries should start appearing soon!
Update 2:54pm ET
Replication is caught up... so any content you have added should be there. Blogs are running... a little over half complete... so we are slowly getting back on track. If you notice any issues, please report them using the contact form so we can fix them!
Things have been pretty busy lately as I complete the process of moving my family to Boston. That doesn't prevent me from jumping into the code and breaking things every now and again... If you didn't know, 360voice has no real dev environment. We like to live out there on the edge... everything is coded directly in production against production systems... it keeps us spry... on edge... if you haven't tried running a software product with NOT development or staging I suggest you try it... it makes you question the need for complexity.
Although I have been known to roll back some of Squidpunch's code from time to time... I know we have a mantra around here that when something breaks, blame Steve (Fatty Chubs)... but lately it should be changed to blame Trapper (ChangeAgent). :)
I did jump in and add a few things lately that I never called out.
So that is it for now. Look for a few bigger new features this week! And for all those wondering, we will be recording another podcast here soon as well.
Thanks to everyone who attended our community night and played with squidpunch, QforQ or myself, or stopped by the chat room. We all had a lot of fun dodging cars and bullets, some more successfully then others. Other then a few connections issues, I think it went pretty well, and it was good to meet some new people. If you have any other feedback for the event, you can let us know here.
Now onto the winners. First the T-shirt Drawings. We randomly chose 4 gamers out of everyone that joined us for the community night festivities. Each will be taking home a 360voice.com customized T-shirt. And the winners are...
1. Vector Scalar
2. Jackson The Pro
3. SFU Doom 101
4. DrMuffinStuffer
And finally, our big winner is Feoen who was randomly chosen out of all registered members of the site that played GTA4 this weekend to win a game of his choosing. If you are one of the winners, please contact us with your full mailing address and shirt size.
Thanks again for all those who participated, we look forward to doing more events like this.
We had been having some data issues recently that were affecting people with R and Q gamertags... about 1000 people in total. I believe those are all cleared up now. If you are missing entries, unfortunately we aren't going to be able to get those back... but if you lost a streak, let us know and we can fix you up.
Steve is working on some steps to correct the problem so we can detect it easier next time.
I am going through the RSS reader today... here are some fun links to 360voice.
Threevue.com
"...maybe pretty soon my 360voice blog will stop guilt-tripping me…"PhilCanavan.com
"It redefines the term ‘blogging’. so if you have a 360 pop along and sign up!"FDNY Shadow
"Its pretty cool. It even writes the blog for you."Video Games, I Play Them
"Seeing my 360 complain about what a jerk of an owner I am on its own fake blog makes me sad..."Everyday Gamer
"The website tracks what games are being played for each registered user and automatically displays them in a blog..."Comic Relief
"...it makes me pick up a controller, just to keep my streaks going!!"
Most of the links in my queue were articles about the GamerDNA/360voice merger... so I spared you that rehash as they all linked to the same press release and all said the same things... and we already linked about that, so we didn't need the retread! :)
Thanks everyone for the mentions!
Hey all don't forget tonight is GTA IV Community Night. You can join us in the chat room, starting around 9:00EST if you want to chat while waiting to get into a game. If you have signed up you will get an invite from the gamertag you signed up with, either www360voicecom, communitynight, or gamerdna. We will be running two simultaneous games, and we will work in new players every few games.
As a reminder, we have a diverse group of folks in our community, so we ask everyone be considerate with language and play style. I know we have such a great group of people that this won't be an issue, but I hope at least people take it easy on me as I am kind of noobish on GTA IV still.
People playing from 360voice.com
www360voicecom: Fatty Chubs
communitynight: Squidpunch
gamerdna: QforQ
ChangeAgent wont be joining us tonight, because he's scared he's traveling, so the 3 of us our holding it down. For those of you who don't know QforQ, he is new to our small family here. He is the Game Talent lead at GamerDNA. And although he is new to our site, he is no noob to gaming. QforQ, (or Sam Houston) got his start with consoles like Genesis and N64 but also computer games where he joined competitive FPS clans for Call of Duty and Call of Duty: United Offensive. He was introduced to the MMO genre with Final Fantasy XI but it wasn't until The Matrix Online released that he had developed an interest for massive worlds. With the Matrix Online Sam began broadcasting internet radio for gamers and podcasting for internet video gamers. This hobby has taken Sam across the US to interview game developers and broadcast live from Sony Online Entertainment's Fan Faire in Las Vegas. Lately he joins myself and ChangeAgent regularly for Rock Band, putting my skills to shame on all instruments.
Sam will be jumping between games tonight and hopes to meet a lot of you.
Blogs are delayed today due to some server issues. Everything looks fine as far as data capture, but just to be safe streaks are turned off today, so everyone gets a free day!
We are also investigating issues a few people reported with missing days. This weekend and Monday we are going to be doing a little maintenance on the server, hopefully speed up the jobs, and move some of the processes around so that game stats appear earlier in the day. We also are going to be planning a few software updates hopefully next week. We keep having growth spurts here at 360voice, so this is a good reminder we need to stay up on performance and optimization. So if you notice anything wierd going on let us know.
For those of with keen eyes you might have all ready noticed this, but we have added a new gadget on the right hand side of your settings page (*login required) titled API Authorization Key. This is your own personal key which you can share with a 360voice API powered site to prove ownership of your blog.
This was developed for those API Ninjas and API Samurais looking for a way to validate you actually owned the gamertag you were submitting to their tools. That is not to say that everyone is going to lock down their tools so you can't check out your friends information on growing list of community tools out there, but recently TX Eegras built a gateway tool that you can use to check if a gamer has badges you have selected as requirements to join your challenge. Without checking ownership, you could just enter my gamertag (shameless plug to raise my ranking!) to recieve the code to join a challenge which was supposed to be locked down to the Community Experts for example.
So as the API warriors conquer new ground with their tools, we are doing our best to help them on this journey. You might have guessed, if you wish to start validating the new API Authorization Keys right away on your community tool, just head on over to the API Documentation for more details on the new API 360voice.gamertag.authenticate
Update: All the spots for the community night are filled! You can still participate by playing GTA IV this weekend, just make sure you are registered on the site, and play the game anytime during the weekend, for a chance to win, see official rules below.
Hey gamers, make sure you tune into Inside Xbox via your Xbox dashboard today for Trixie's Community Confidential. Not only do you get to see Trixie driving, but she also talks 360voice and our upcoming GTA Community Night. For those that don't know this Friday (May 16th from 9:00PM-11:00PM EST). You can join 360voice.com staff for some multiplayer GTA IV. If you are interested in playing, send us a friends request to the gamertag gamerdna. Attending this event will earn you the plays well with other badge and the chance to win some t-shirts.
If you can't join us Friday, you can still play GTA and have a chance at a prize. Any registered member of the site that plays GTA IV any time between Friday May 16th and Sunday May 18th, will be eligible for a chance to win an Xbox 360 game of their choosing (max value $64.99).
So special thanks to Trixie and the Xbox team for the fun video and the mention. We hope to see you all online!
Official Rules: To be eligible for the game drawing you must be a registered member of the site, must play GTA IV between 01:00AM 05/16/2008 EST and 11:00PM 05/18/2008 EST (while connected to Xbox Live and having all privacy settings disabled) either single or multiplayer. Full details on quantity and qualification for t-shirt drawings, will be giving out during the community game night on Friday May 16th.
A 360voice member, ecu chosen 0ne, put together a fantastic community tool bar using conduit. I have added a link to it on your share page. Here is the link to check it out. I am running it now, and it is pretty sweet for all you 360voice power users!
360voice Community Tool bar
Download and install this custom 360voice tool bar for your browser that makes using and navigating the site easy!
This tool bar was developed using Conduit by ecu chosen 0ne, and the link is provided as a courtesy. Any technical issues should be taken up with Conduit.
What do you think? (click the title of this post to leave a comment!)
Thanks again ecu chosen 0ne! He also promised to be making updates, so watch the community showcase for more information.
For this rounds Member of the Moment, we had to stop and ask ourselves a few questions. "Can you know the mighty ocean? Can you lasso a star from the sky? Can you say to a rainbow... 'Hey, stop being a rainbow for a second'? No! such is Mango!"
MightyMango, that is. He certainly does have a mighty gamerscore to go along with his name, at an amazing 80,619 at the time of this interview! He is in the top 1% after all. He also plays well with others, and has a mighty forum presence, including helping people out in support threads. Not bad for a fruit! Some people may also know him as Ryan, and he resides in my home state of Minnesota!
Let's see what the good word is from the fruit bowl today!
Q: So here goes... How long have you been gaming?
A: My wife tells me all my life, but probably since about 1982. I started on an Apple IIe of all things. I didn't actually play on a console until 1983 and my first console was an Atari 5200. I actually still own it.
Q: What was the first game that you played and what drew you into gaming in general?
A: Well, if you want to call it a game it was "Turtle". You basically had to "command" the "Turtle" which was nothing more then a triangle through a maze. My first console game that I really remember was the awful Pac-Man port on the 2600. The game that really sucked me in though was Dig Dug on my 5200.
Q: What brought you to 360voice, and what do you think is the best feature of the site?
A: Well my friend Sothy kept posting in a IRC channel about his blog on 360v. So I signed up and kinda forgot that I did until around August of last summer. The I discovered the forums and was instantly hooked. It is a friendly forum and I felt right at home. ZeroDesolation was the first person I really started to talk to and then I joined the Order. I guess the rest is history.
Between the forums and the blogs I don't think I can really pick out one feature that I really think is the best. There are so many things that the site and the community do so well. The one feature that I know I obsess about the most though is the streaks. Yeah, I know I'm just over 100 days right now but the lengths that I go to to keep it going are just silly. I just moved and I was having problems getting my internet up and running, I was just about ready to take my 360 to my work to use the internet on my day off.
Q: Speaking of streaks... your current streak is 105 days, but you had 167 at one point, wow! Do you plan to keep going past your record this time?
A: Well I have 3 systems now as well as my PC so I think my streak will be safe. It all depends on my wife going into labor. I looked and the hospital looks like it has wireless so I may be bringing a 360 with.
Q: We need video if you're sitting there playing the 360 while your wife is in labor! Is there anything that you would like to see on 3v that isn't already here?
A: One thing I would like to see is the time that you played a game recorded like it was over on Liveeye. Other then that the guys in charge seem to be doing an excellent job adding features all the time so by the time I think of something to add its already there.
Q: Who would win in a fight, Syndelin or Mr. Achievement?
A: Syndelin because she is from Minnesota, women from here are fighters, mainly because of the 6 months of winter we have to deal with.
Q: Good answer, and too true!! When did you sign up for live?
A: Well, I signed up when live was available over 5 years ago. That was on a different gamertag that I haven't used since the 360 launch. So I've been on live since the beginning.
Q: What is your game setup?
A: Well, right now its mostly in cardboard boxes pretty SWEET. It will be two 360's on a 63inch DLP, one US system and one Japanese system. The 3rd xbox will be in my bedroom on a 50inch or on a 42 inch plasma in my new family room. Though the cardboard boxes do look pretty sweet.
Q: I think I'll have that setup in a week or so (The boxes that is)! What other systems, if any, do you own?
A: This is a funny question. I'm a video game collector and have systems from the PS3 back to the RCA Studio II (Yes thats a system). I currently am pushing close to 3000 total titles and my 360 collection is at 214 US retail titles as well as all the arcade games and a few imports as well. I will say that my favorite older system is the NES with about 491 titles.
Q: No wonder you have so many boxes for your setup! What's your favorite feature on Xbox LIVE?
A: Other the achievement points, the voice chat. I like that I can talk to a friend who is playing a completely different title than I am.
Q: You have played 250 games! That's amazing. What new ones coming up are you looking forward to?
A: Gears 2 has my interest. Bionic Commando looks interesting as well. Grid, Haze, and Lego Indiana Jones all look fun as well.
Q: Do you own or rent games for the most part?
A: Own, but I do have an account on Gamefly. I end up buying a lot of games through them because the games are complete and in really good shape. I have been know to "rent" games to people though :-P
Q: You have enough, you could be your own gamefly! ;) Are there any genres that you prefer over the others, or do you just like to game, no matter what type it is?
A: I just like to play games pure and simple. FPS and Race titles tend to be my favorite genres but hack and slash games tend to be ones I play the most.
Q: Any must-have titles for 2008, or ones that you have played already this year that you think will take the title of "game of the year" for you?
A: I think Grid could end up being my game of the year. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is another excellent title as well, I just haven't had enough time to really get into it.
Q: You do seem pretty busy lately. You have a 3 star challenge badge, but not the HTTK badge yet? Do you play for points... or fun?
A: Well, every challenge that I really tried in someone tried harder. I had the first chance to get the viral badge and Fatty and Disbron walked all over me. So now I play for fun, if I get the HTTK badge thats just an added bonus.
Q: You have a badge that everyone seems to be after! What contest did you win?
A: I got randomly picked on a contest that was on the front page. I won "The Simpsons Video Game" and its actually a game that my kids request me to play all the time.
Q: I see that you're one of the members of the race to 100 completed retail games as well. How is that going and who do you think will be the first to pull it off?
A: I think Tynstar will do it, but it depends on his future schooling. I think I still have a chance now that I've finally moved. Its going to be interesting to see in the end, everyone of the people that are in it have a good chance of pulling it off.
Q:What is the one Achievement you are most proud of?
A: Beating COD2 on Veteran. People say its a fast 1000 points, but its a VERY hard 1000 points. That is one that I will remain proud of. Closely behind that would be the score 50,000 in Discs of Tron.
Q: Is there a feature you would like to see in the next Xbox 360 System Update?
A: Group voice chat is greatly needed. It would make the 360 enviroment in gaming more like PC gaming.
Q: Is there anything else that you would like to add, or that you would like the community to know about you?
A: Well, most of the things I say are just to egg people on. It was fun to pick on Fatty a few months ago that I was going to catch his gamer score. I would like to think that I'm a helpful member of the community that is willing to help out other gamers achieve their gaming goals. I would also like people to check out Rfgeneration.com if they are into collecting as its an excellent database for collectors to keep track of their games. Thanks to 360 voice for choosing me to be the Member of the Moment, its a pretty sweet honor. Thanks Everyone, you are what makes this site great!!
Congrats Ryan, on the new house, the future hospital visit for the birth of your new baby, and also congrats on them having wireless internet there! Oh yeah, and the whole Member of the Moment 15 seconds of fame on the front page thing too. Thank you so much for your time, and contributions to 360voice. Community Members like you make 360voice the wonderful place that it is!
We are throwing up two small badges tonight. They are:
Nothing huge, but we like to jump in when we can to reward and recognize.
Update 10:01pm CT
Also forgot some small genre updates from Fatty Chubs:
Arcade madness!
Next weekend (May 16th-May 18th) we have two GTA IV related events going on. First we are kicking off GTA IV weekend with a Community Game Night on Friday May 16th from 9:00PM-11:00PM EST. If you would like to play, send us a friends request to the gamertag gamerdna. Attending this event will earn you the plays well with other badge and the chance to win some t-shirts.
In addition any registered member of the site that plays GTA IV any time between Friday May 16th and Sunday May 18th, will be eligible for a chance to win an Xbox 360 game of their choosing (max value $64.99).
So keep that Xbox happy, and pop in GTA IV and join us online!
Official Rules: To be eligible for the game drawing you must be a registered member of the site, must play GTA IV between 01:00AM 05/16/2008 EST and 11:00PM 05/18/2008 EST (while connected to Xbox Live and having all privacy settings disabled) either single or multiplayer. Full details on quantity and qualification for t-shirt drawings, will be giving out during the community game night on Friday May 16th.
A slew of a new games have been added to genres, as well as the creation of a new genre, Party Games. Party Games are traditionally mini-game based 4+ player romps. Usually something you break out at a party that anyone can pick up, think Fuzion Frenzy or the most famous example Mario Party. Here is a full list of tonight's additions.
Sandbox - Bully Scholarship Edition and GTA IV.
FPS - Army of Two and Rainbow Six Vegas 2.
Music - Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore.
Race - Burnout Paradise.
Shmup - Ikaruga.
Sports - MLB2K8.
Strategy - Culdcept Saga.
Oddball - Overlord.Party Games (New) - Fusion Frenzy 2, Viva Pinata: Party Animals and Scene It?.
Yes GTA IV was added a lot earlier then other titles normally are, but the majority of the site has been playing it and it will give us all something to work towards. Hit us up in the forums for construction discussions of the changes.
The Xbox Content Creation Challenge presented by Nokia came to a close last month... and while they are still tabulating to "official" winners, it is safe to call the winner of the 360voice community:
For getting the most votes out of all the themes submitted by 360voice users, morton819 receives a Nokia N81 8GB Phone! Good times. When we receive the ten (10) 400 MS point cards we will also conduct a random drawing form the other 28 users and announce the winner.
Morton819 if you are out there, email us, because that isn't your gamertag so I don't know how to contact you!!
There were 28 Xbox Dashboard themes submitted by 360voice. A special thanks to everyone who participated in the challenge... and who knows... if you created something really compelling, you might get a call from Disruptive Publishing even though you didn't win! At least that is what they have stated!
We have been working on and testing this for a little while now and finally are ready to release it for all of you to use. We are now allowing you to recieve email notifications on events that may happen on your blog,
You now have the ability to enable email notifications on:
Additionally any posts that you have subscribed to on the forums will also be manageable on this page, giving you one central point to modify anything related to email notifications.
Just head on over to your settings page (you must be logged in) and click the link for Email Notifications to manage what you would like to be emailed on, and the ability to modify your forum subscriptions.
Happy Friday!
I didn't really announce this change, so I wanted to officially put it out there...
Remember Microblogging? (you have to be logged in) You put in a game... while you are playing it, you go to your computer... the site will know you are playing it and let you make a comment on the game as well as locking in your streak. This also makes it so demos and betas can appear in your blog and you will get credit for playing the... I have slightly extended this:
I also added an RSS feed for weekly recaps only... so if you just want to get those notifications about yourself or a person, you can. Check out your share page to see that.
This month was unique because we changed the calculation of how you can become most popular... it use to be you only got credit for hits to your blog homepage... this month we started counting every hit to each individual item where you leave comments... so this shook things up a tiny bit, giving people with lots of comment traffic an advantage over people with simply large home page visit counts.
So there you have it! Congrats to everyone who made it on the list!
