Xbox Live “Metro” Dashboard

Being a Software Tester and a Gamer, I obviously jumped at the chance to become a beta tester for the new Xbox Dashboard. Earlier this week I got the “Time for an update” message, and knew it was time to play.

As always with the Xbox updates, it just worked, took very little time and before I knew it, I was presented with the new dash, and I have to say, Microsoft have really impressed me.

So, what to expect when this goes live to the public ?

First screen you get is, Download a profile, Create a profile, or log in using your profile on a memory stick or hard drive. I have multiple Xboxs in the house, so tend to carry my profile and saves on a memory stick. However what I did was hit the download profile button. Within about 30 seconds it downloaded my profile from the server and plonked this on the hard drive, you are then given the option to save password….this essentially automatically logs you in when you switch on the Xbox.

Once your logged in, your presented by the new dashboard. This seems a lot cleaner than the previous version as it groups the content together with a title bar above.

The landing screen (at least for me) is Home, which gives you a Play <Current game in your DVD Drive>, Quickplay (the previous couple of games you’ve played), a rolling advert in the middle, and a couple of adverts down the right hand side.

The left tab to this in the bing search, which I’ve tried on the the Kinect and this seems to work fine. I shouted at it “Xbox Bing Search Batman” and was presented by all the batman films, games, and any music that was available on Zune Music. I could then just say “Lego Batman”, then screens, and I could quite easily navigate through the screens with the power of my voice.

The tab to the right of Home is social. Now this is where I think the major difference is. No longer do you have a massive list of friends that you have to scroll through, you only get the friends that are online and what they are playing. You can if you wish click on the friends tab and see everyone.

Underneath your friends button you also have a Social Apps section, this is where you will find the likes of twitter, facebook and video kinect. Finally on the screen you have the option to Sign In or Out.

Now one of the major additions is you can now see friends of friends. Clicking on any of your friends will give you the option to Send Message, Join Game, Invite to Party, Compare Games or Friends. The Friends button will show you a list of your friends friends, what they are playing and essentially everything you would expect to see if these people where in your friends list.

Another feature under the Friends tab are Parties, Beacons & Activity and Add friend. Add friend and Parties explain themselves, however the Beacons & Activity is quite interesting. The centre tab is “My Activity” which give you your top 5 activities, currently at the top of mine is Skyrim, which says 2 online, and 13 recently played. Clicking on this drills you down another level and takes you to a “Your friends’ activity in this game”. Currently this lists 13 of my friends, which you can then click through to their profile.

The next tab is Friends’ Activity, which gives “The games and apps your friends have been playing” and essentially a personalised top 10, with the top seeming to be Modern Warfare 3, on the Xbox, with 19 recently played. This screen is quite interesting, if I wanted to play online with my xbox friends, I know what games are hot within my gaming community. Currently the top 5 are Modern Warefare 3, Gear of War 3, Battlefield 3, Skyrim and Call of Duty Elite.

The final tab in here is the My Beacons. Here you can tag a game, and highlight to your friends that you want to hook up and play online. From my understanding, if one of your friends starts playing a tagged game, they will be notified that you want to play. Beacons are also something you can set on the Xbox.com website, as this has just had a major overall to bring in line with the Metro dashboard.

What they have added, and I think is an excellent feature is a more verbose notification system. Previously if I fired up a game that others were playing, it would say “Friends playing this game”, now it tells you how many friends are playing this game. Also, if friends start playing a game you are playing, you will get a notification saying <friends names> has started playing <your game>, which I think will be brilliant for people wanting to hook up and play multiplayer games.

The next 3 screen Video, Games, Music all work similar to the current dashboard, but redesigned to the new format.

The next screen, Apps, intrigues me, and not sure where they’re going to go with it. Currently in the beta this had Sky, ZuneVideo, ZuneMusic, Last.fm, Facebook and Halo Waypoint (as I have these all installed. There is a My Apps “folder” that contains Media Center, Picture Viewer, View Player, Music Player and Sky. The next “folder” is the one that intrigues me.. “Apps Marketplace”. Currently all this has in it is “Social”, and takes you to the Social tab, however this could get interesting if they start to add more apps.

The next tab is Pre-release, which currently has Green Preview, Latest Info, New Features, Help and Tips, which essentially give you a text dump to the screen. The Green Preview however doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

The final screen is settings, and here you can find all the normal, System, Preferences, Profile, Kinect, Account, Privacy, Family and Turn Off.

Now one of the major features you’ll find here is the Cloud Saves. Microsoft are kindly giving 512Mb of cloud storage to gold members. This isn’t enabled by default, you need to go into System >> Storage >> Cloud Saved Games >> Enable. Once this is done, you can select this as a storage device as you would if you were saving to a memory stick. What is seems to do is use a local cache, and then upload to the cloud in the background, I assume this as I’ve recently been playing skyrim, and after turning off the xbox, the light blinks on the front as it does when you have background downloads enabled.

All in all I’m very impressed with this update, and only hope Sony copy what they’ve done with the cloud storage, instead of this ‘backup your saves at some point during the night rubbish’ that they have, this doesn’t help me having multiple consoles and wanting to move between room.

One thing I will say, is I hope they give the option to buy more storage, as Skyrim and my 48 saves take up most of the 512Mb, and there is no way I can get my 2Gb of Dragon Age saves up there.

Tags: activity, advert, adverts, Batman, batman films, beta tester, button, chance, content, drive, dvd drive, facebook, feature, gamer, hard drive, home, house, lego, little time, lt, memory stick, Metro, Microsoft, music, option, password, play, previous version, profile button, screen, software, software tester, tab, Video, xbox, xbox dashboard, xbox live, Xboxs

BT Infinity

This story starts at the end of last year, when I first heard of the FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) technology. As you may or may not know, the FTTC technology is essentially replacing the copper cable that goes from you’re local exchange to your local cabinet (those big green boxes on your road). Instead of the normal copper wiring, it’s being replaced by fibre, which increases the speed us mere mortals get, as the distance the signal needs to travel through copper wiring is normally less that 300 metres, instead of the couple of miles from the exchange.

I am in the unfortunate position where I could only get ADSL as Virgin’s cable runs passed the bottom of my cull de sac but doesn’t come up it. Since I’ve lived here I’ve seen my internet go from 1Mb with BT, to 2Mb with Bulldog,to 3.5Mb with Sky.

Now I’m the kind of person who embraces the new technology, love my media, and have multiple devices in the house that can stream content from the internet. These include the PS3..with 4OD, ITV, BBC iPlayer and Lovefilm, the Xbox will do Sky Anytime, the AppleTV steams movies, podcast etc, and the Sky+ HD box will do it’s Anytime+ service. It also goes without saying, that all the macs in the house can stream all these services too. The problem is, with a crappy 3.5Mb line, it’s virtual impossible to use these streaming services without it either hogging the entire network, or stopping to buffer all the time, making it virtually unusable. I’ve also been attempting to host a minecraft server, but with the poor upload speed I got from Sky, it was laggy as hell for anybody connecting from outside my network.

So, at the the end of last year, I kept an eye on SamKnows (an excellent site if you want to know anything about your local broadband networks), and watched the date move around for the FTTC upgrade, as I’d already had a flyer through the door saying “Get BT Infinity soon”….you can imagine my excitement….I could finally use these services properly

Finally in March the exchange was upgraded, I went to the BT Infinity site….only to be told, “Sorry not due in your area in the next 6 months”..so I checked a few other postcodes, and sure enough other locations in my area were cabled up and ready to go.

I did a little more research and found that not only did the exchange need to be enabled, but so did the cabinet (makes sense really), so I waited.

Every couple of weeks, I’d visit the BT Infinity site again..but still it said No.

I then did a little more digging, and came across the ADSL checker, which suggested my exchange had been updated ! Woot !….went back to the BT Infinity site, entered my details with Credit Card in hand, only to told it wasn’t available in my area ? So I rang BT’s sales team, explained my finding and was told I couldn’t have it yet, but it’d be with me “soon” and I should call back in a few weeks. A few weeks went by, I rang, and told…”Sorry still not available, keep checking the website”

A few more months passed and the site wasn’t updating so I then did a little more digging, and found online a spreadsheet of the rollout program for the FTTC exchange rollout, I found my postcode on there and sure enough..I was enabled, and had been for a while ! So with this information I rang BT’s sales team, and the confirmed…”Yes I could have it !”….you can only imagine how excited I was !….I gave all my details, arranged an install date, the works !…I was told I would get an email shortly confirmed everything.

A day passed and still no email, and stupidly I didn’t take the guys name, or the order number over the phone so I rang back to get them. After a being passed from department to department I somehow ended up speaking to a nice lady in the cancelations department who did find an order on the system but it had been cancelled ?!?. Hearing the frustration in my voice she was kind enough to put the order through herself instead of passing me on to yet another department. Unfortunately at the final stages something was stopping her from placing the order so she agreed for somebody to ring me back the following day.

Sure enough, the following day, a sales person rung and took my order, however she couldn’t provide me with the BT Infinity service as that service wasn’t available in my area and you could only sell me the new fibre service ?!?….I check the upload/download speeds with her, and she confirmed the matched with the ADSL speed checker..so I thought what the hell, the price was the same. With the package I went for the free phoneline (as I planned to keep my Sky broadband as backup). She told me that there was a charge for the install but as I’d been messed around, she’d discount it, as well as the one off delivery charge for the BT Home Hub 3. Again, it worked out to be the same price as on the web, so thought…what the hell and went for it. I got the confirmation email through, this said I would get up to 40Mb down, and up to 2Mb up, I instantly queried this as the package I was sold was the up to 10Mb upload speed (I need if for my Minecraft server). I got a prompt email back saying that it was just a boiler plate email and I will get the up to 10Mb upload speed….phew !

3 weeks later, it’s install day, the engineer was due between 8am and 1pm, so I agreed to work from home that morning, and sat in waiting. Around 11am the engineer showed up, asked where the phoneline was that he was using….I then explained that he was meant to be fitting one. He then checked his sheets and started lifting man hole covers and got to work. I left the door open for him and went back to the office and continued to work myself. After 5 minutes or so I heard a van start, went to the window and saw the guy driving off ?…..so I closed the door, scratched my head and went back to work….45 minutes passed and the guy didn’t come back, I decided to give him 5 more minutes before I rang BT to say WTF ?….I was literally reaching for the phone when he came back, no explanation, no nothing, just continued to work.

He ran the cable, then got on the phone ringing round other engineers asking if they had any clips as he’d ran out (he was right outside my window), on the 5th call he managed to track down some clips, and sure enough, got in his van and buggered off again !

About 30 minutes later he came back, finished off the job and got me up and running. I had very little time to test anything before he left as he’d taken so long and I needed to get back to the office for a meeting. He did however say that I had 30Mb down and 2Mb up at the wall socket, which was amazing as I’d only been promised 15 down, the upload speed concerned me as I’d been promised a minimum of 5Mb up, however it was something I would look at when I got home as I needed to get to work.

So got home in the evening, checked the speeds, I was getting around 27Mb down, and around 1.6Mb up. I emailed the sales person who had put the order through for me, and she emailed back saying my line would take 10 days to stabilise and confirmed again that I would get the “up to 10Mb”. I wasn’t really happy with this answer, as I was getting around 70% of the download speed, surely this should mean I get around 70% of the upload speed…it seemed to me that the confirmation email was correct, and my account was actually up to 2Mb. I then rang the “technical” support team who couldn’t understand me, then tried to put me through to the BT Vision support team, the cut me off….so I rang back, spoke to another “technical” person who then finally got me through to somebody in the BT Infinity team. I was told by this “technical” person that everything at their end was set up correctly, and it was possibly a problem in the exchange and they would have to send another engineer ??. Even though the problem was in the exchange the engineer also apparently had to come to the premise to check if it was fixed so I arranged to have him come around today.

After then checking twitter, I noticed that BTCare had responded to one of my tweets, “I was complaining about the engineer going awol”, in which I replied that I was having problems with the upload speed. I was sent a link to a website where I filled in all the details. Within about an hour I had a guy call me to ask what the problem was, he had a quick look and said, “Your upload speed is capped at 2Mb, would you like me to removed it ?”…..obviously I told him yes and was told I’d see the change within the next 72 hours, and he’d cancel the engineers visit, and apologied for the mix up.

The following morning, sure enough my upload speed had risen to 8Mb !!! RESULT !….I was a happy bunny, finally I was up and running !

This morning, I got a phone call from BT “technical” support, saying that the engineer was on his way to the exchange, and I should see a speed increase in the next 72 hours !!!! “God no !, the problem has been fixed ! Don’t touch anything !” I said !!!!!!, and told him to close the call and call off the engineer….WTF !

Literally minutes after the phone call, I got an email through from BT (well 2 actually) saying “You bill is available online”, I checked it out and it was over £80 !!!, the good will gesture discount for the install and delivery were not on there and I am being charged the full amount !!! WTF BT, WTF !!!! Obviously I’ve emailed the sales person to ask….WTF ?….I await a response from my email.

Is this really Britains finest Telecom service ??????…..and just to add insult to injury, IF I’d have been able to order via the website, I’d have got £100 cashback via Quidco…also, they are now doing the first 3 months FREE ?!?

Update – 13/07/2011. Thanks to the awesome guys who are manning the @BTCare twitter account, not only have I been refunded the difference in cash, but also been given 3 months free. I am once again a happy bunny with BT. I would however say, that if you do need to contact them about ANYTHING….use Twitter !

Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ10

I’ve been on the lookout for a new camera for a while now, as my previous Acer CR-6530 camera was getting a tad old. Now don’t get me wrong, the CR-6530 is still a great camera, but the battery was on it’s way out, and it’s not quite as portable as the newer camera.

I was lucky enough to received the Panasonic HDC-SD200 HD Camcorder for my birthday a couple of years ago, and was blown away by how good the camera quality was…so since then, I’ve been on the lookout.

The thing that really caught my eye about the TZ10, was the ability to meta tag your photos with the GPS co-ordinates. Now I know this is a little geeky, and not everybody’s cup of tea but it’s just something I’ve got used to with the iPhone 4.

Each photo I take on the iPhone get meta tagged with the co-ordinates and passes this information to iPhoto and then to Flickr. Now granted you can do this manually, but where’s the fun in that !.

Now I know that the new model has just come out (the TZ20, 14.1 megapixels and a touch screen), but this was the perfect time to buy, as the price of this little beauty has dropped like a stone. When I originally looked at it around Christmas time, it was sat at £250+, now it’s £190.

So, now you know why I’ve gone for Panasonic, and why this model….so how is it…..it’s pretty damn good. This camera is so feature rich, after a week of playing with it I’ve still not scratched the surface, I could attempt to describe how good it is, or just look at the bottom of this post for some images I took in the back garden, the rest can be found on my flickr public gallery

Below, are the unboxing pics, as well as tech specs

 

Product Features

 

Technical Details

Tags: auto mode, camera quality, christmas time, cup of tea, great camera, hd camcorder, hdc, HDMI, image stabilizer, intelligent auto, iphone, iphone 4, little beauty, meta tag, new camera, optical image, panasonic lumix dmc, resolution technology, sd200, tz10