Matt Brett
Introducing Dashboard Themes
I’m extremely happy to announce the “top secret Xbox related site” I’ve been working on for the past few months is up and running! Dashboard Themes is the first and only site that allows you to preview Xbox 360 dashboard themes as they appear within the dashboard before dropping any coin on them. The current state of the Xbox Live Marketplace doesn’t give you an option to preview content before you pay and Microsoft’s online components for Marketplace content don’t do much better. I came up with an idea to fill this gaping whole, and along with my good friend Andrew McTeer, made it happen.
You can read more on The Why, Who and How on the site itself. And be sure to check out the FAQ if that doesn’t cover it.
We’re not 100% where we’d like to be, but we’re confident with the point we’re at and have decided to go live with the site today and roll out the features that missed the boat in the coming weeks. Most of these features are enhancements to existing areas of the site, but a few new things are in the queue as well. All in all, I feel that the site is very strong as it stands today and I’m quite proud our of accomplishment.
If you like what we’ve done here, please help spread the word via your favourite social bookmarking-type site and other usual avenues. We’re not entirely sure how the server will hold up if there’s a big burst of traffic, but hopefully we’ll get to test that out soon. 
And finally, we’re asking for donations to help cover expenses of getting the site online until we get some advertisers on board. If you find the site useful and could spare a buck or two, we’d greatly appreciate it.
So there it is, the project I’ve had under my hat and hinting at for weeks now. Feels good to have it off the ground and it’s nice to have actually done something to contribute to a solution of a problem that’s been driving Xbox 360 owners mad since launch.
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| A Disappointing Day, Brought to You by Microsoft | December 4, 2007 | 23 |
| Selling Off Dashboard Themes | August 17, 2007 | 25 |
| PlayStation 3 vs Xbox 360: Comparison Part 2 | August 8, 2007 | 22 |
| Microsoft Launches Another Useless Xbox 360 Site | October 11, 2006 | 7 |
| Massive Announcements at X’06 | September 27, 2006 | 14 |
26 Comments
It was great working with you on this project Matt!
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Very cool guys!
@MATT: Have you considered dropping the High Road guys a line about this? Might help to get the word out…
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Brilliant idea, I know it’s only early but it’s looking great so far!
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Looks good! Story is up on Digg.
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This is an awesome idea. Hope it works well for you Matt.
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good luck with it.
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Absolutely brilliant! So many times I’m tempted to buy a them but don’t out of fear.
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It’s dead already? And it was such a good idea. This sucks
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Site down?
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I’m sure they will bring it back up when they sort the bandwidth.
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I mean, the hosting.
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Wow, how crazy have these past 3 hours been? My site is holding up great, though. Considering it’s taking the brunt of the load from Digg. I know Xbox 360 Fanboy has linked directly to DBT, not sure if there are any others at this point, but that shit is down for the count right now. Andrew’s seeing if there’s anything he can do to optimize, but we’ll probably be back online later this even regardless once things calm down a bit.
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I have been in search for a good 360 dashboard theme viewer for a long time now. The closest I got was searching for hours through flickr.com for screenshots. This was a great idea.
I have been a fan of mattbrett.com for a few months now, awesome reviews and webdesign.
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Aw… It’s down.
I’m sure it’s some wonderful work but!
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should be ok now, had to do some last minute tweaks for performance.
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So the folks on flickr were right. Sweet.
Now make a run off site for the display icons?
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Dude, you rock!
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Very cool! I mentioned on my site, good luck with DT!
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A nice idea, well executed.
Congrats Matt.
Now you need to expand it to include gamer pic packs and European and Asian releases ;o)
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Great job Matt and friends!
If you want some staff, *cough*, contact me
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Your Dashboard Themes Website was an excellent idea and the Website looks awesome!
Congratulations on an outstanding project
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Impressive sir!
Nice site, you do great work. I love the community of creative, inspiring designers/developers that PROVE you CAN do great sites and still stick to standards!
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Brilliant as always, Matt.
You design style is awesome, well executed and clean.
You work wonders with WP.
It seems you can’t catch a break with the hosting.
What’s the deal?
Are your sites getting hammered that bad?
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Wow, what a great idea. I think that it will really take off, as most of the xbox live stuff seems to turn to gold. I love the presentation of the site, top notch work. Good luck to you guys in the future, and may your site flourish in the future.
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[...] video games, and life in general. Made a name for myself as a decent designer. Launched a couple of projects that made a pretty big splash. And kept everyone up-to-date on my personal life via Twitter and [...]
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[...] that people aren't trying to fix this in different ways. For a while there was a site called Dashboard Themes which let you preview and comment on the various dashboard themes in the Marketplace. [...]
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