I Got My RRoD Xbox 360 Fixed, No Thanks to Microsoft

Two weeks ago today, I turned on my Xbox 360 and was greeted by 3 glorious red lights. Never in my life, have I gone from being in a perfectly great mood to completely filled with rage in such a short span. This is after all, my fourth Xbox 360 to fall victim to one error or another that rendered it useless. I wasted no time, and jumped on the phone with Xbox Support to start the process of sending in my console in return for a refurbished one. Seeing as my Xbox 360…

Microsoft Never Cease to Disappoint Me

…although, I wish that trend would come to an end. I couldn’t have been happier this morning, when I read the news that Toshiba had come to their senses and dumped HD DVD. Instead of relaxing on the couch while I sipped my morning coffee, I listed my HD DVD add-on and all my movies on eBay. All the while, in the back of mind I knew I was finally going to get an Xbox 360 Elite. I never thought the day would come! I figured I would…

A Disappointing Day, Brought to You by Microsoft

Today was a big day for Xbox 360 owners around the world. Microsoft rolled out the Fall update, along with Xbox Originals, and announced a launch date of December 11 for the Video Marketplace in Europe and Canada. The second major Dashboard update for this year packs quite a punch with a few major features, along with a massive list of smaller fixes and additions. So, how is that disappointing?

Xbox 360′s DRM is Broken on Many Levels

Let’s go back to March 27 – the day Microsoft officially announced the Xbox 360 Elite. I say officially, because the Elite was probably the worst kept secret in recent gaming history. With the various online news outlets spouting rumors of a black, upgraded console with HDMI and a 120GB HDD regularly over the course of many months leading up to the Elite’s unveiling, it was no surprise when MS pulled back the curtain to show us what they had in store. And since there had been such…

Microsoft Launches Another Useless Xbox 360 Site

Providing a “resource” that is really nothing more than a sales pitch/press release is nothing new for Microsoft. And it seems they’ve done it again with the launch of XBOX LIVE PIPELINE – sorry, didn’t mean to yell at you. That’s apparently the name of the site. Anyway, I almost shat myself when a friend pointed this out to me earlier today as it could have hindered a project I’m working on. I let out a sigh of relief, followed by a laugh, followed by 5 minutes of screaming at my monitor once I made a few clicks through the various efforts. So what is Xbox Live Pipeline and why am I bitching? Why, it’s “Your one-stop guide to Xbox Live Marketplace”. Actually, it’s not even close. Here’s why…

Feed Icon: And Then There Were Two

Last week I updated FeedIcons.com for the first time since I launched it back in December. I was hoping to have a full international site up and running a short time after the initial launch, but it never happened. It’s still in the works and slowly but surely getting there.

Feed Icon: Trademark, Agreement, Guidelines, what?

It’s been quiet on the Feed Icon front for the past few months. After releasing the download package and creating feedicons.com, the thing spread like wild fire! I was expecting the blogging community to jump on board without a doubt, but the widespread adoption has been incredible.

Post E3 2006 Thoughts: Microsoft

The last of the “big three”, who’s in a bit of a different situation than Nintendo and Sony since their next-gen effort is already on the market. I was curious to see what announcements would be made and if any new games would be announced for the Xbox 360. Not only did they pull through in the games department, but they also unveiled a whole slew of peripherals and gave 360 owners lots of things to get excited about.

GameCom X30 Headset for Xbox 360: Review

The day I picked up my Xbox 360, I spent a fair bit of time checking out all the accessories and deciding which ones to get. I was bummed to discover the only headset available was the standard Microsoft one that’s big, ugly and cheap looking. I never had the original Xbox Live headset as I got my Xbox just before Halo 2 was released and some friends of mine at an Xbox PR company hooked me up with the limited edition Halo 2 headset. That little thing was great! It was small, sleek and comfortable. Lucky for us, the company behind the Halo 2 headset has done it again – this time for the Xbox 360.

Running IE 7 Beta 2 and IE 6 on Windows XP

Microsoft made a some big waves today by releasing the first public beta of Internet Explorer 7. Unlike the previous beta, which was closed to developers. This one features many crucial fixes as far as how it renders pages. Tons of the most notorious CSS bugs have been squashed and some other nice-to-have features been added. Transparent PNG support made it into the first beta, so there’s 2 huge things right there that should make all web designers rejoice. Now [Microsoft], finish this shit up and roll it out to the masses, stat!

Being a designer and a Windows user, I was obviously anxious to see how IE 7 was coming along. I installed it right away and no surprise, it replaced IE 6. Probably not a big deal for the average user, but I still need IE 6 for testing purposes. I remembered having older versions of IE 5 and 5.5 back in the day and after a quick search made my way back to evolt.org – Browser Archive. Low and behold, in the standalone IE directory, there’s a version of IE 6. I quickly downloaded it, fired it up and sure enough, it works!