I installed Windows Vista Ultimate (x64) last night and everything went pretty smoothly.  This, of course, is on the second machine I have on my desk so I can see what works (and doesn't) before making the full jump on the main machine.  Out Of The Box Experience After the installation and major Windows Update updates, the only ...

I'm not sure when the device was released, but I've been waiting for this for a while.  It wasn't at the local Best Buy this past Tuesday, but I found a couple at a local Game Stop.  It is the Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows.  With this device, you can leverage many of the wireless devices ...

OK, it's more of a proof of concept right now, but as you can see utilizing the HTTP Notifications feature in XboxFriends for the Desktop I am able to display my Xbox Live friends list on the right hand side.  It does use caching so it is a little bit behind what the desktop application shows (within 3 minutes); but it looks pretty good ...

-- Begin Rant -- Now, I'm not sure what the “real” reason behind a decision (albiet a rumor, but I don't doubt it) of pulling the VB namespace from the modified Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 that is being done for the Xbox 360.  My first question, not even VB related, is why in the world would a company want to ...

Obviously I've been pretty swamped with work and everything else... including working on XboxFriends.  Here is an image that demonstrates the ToolTip control that is included with Visual Studio 2005 utilizing the information in this article to display a snapshot of information that can add a lot of bang for the buck. Yes! That is a ...

Wouldn't you know that as soon as I make XboxFriends available, the Xbox guys would come along and make massive changes to their site.  I didn't keep a real close eye on it, but the site appeared to be down for most of the day yesterday in order to apply an upgrade in features. I know I've complained in the past about the Xbox guys not ...

I know, you've heard it before, but I've been really busy lately.  I've been digging deep into Community Server helping some friends put together a community site.  The more I dig into ASP.NET; the more I see how far web development has come yet still how far behind the curve “web based applications” are in relationship to ...

I recently received a comment regarding XboxFriends that goes as follows: So do you store the Passport info so you can keep signing in every time Passport logs you out? And doesn't your program communicate through your server? Why should I trust you with my Passport info? Let me answer the questions directly and then I can transition into why I ...

I'm looking for a few people to test XboxFriends as thoroughly as they can before I release it publicly.  The release is very behind since I had to make it a priority to obfuscate the code to protect one of the newest features (which was a requirement for XboxFriends to work continuously). If interested, you can download the .zip formatted ...

I was experiencing a bit of lag while playing DOA4, so did some research.  What I found is this link that measures your actual travel time performance (instead of generic ping) utilizing Quake III type of traffic.  This test demonstrates how their StreamEngine QoS technology works and what type of results you could get as a result.  ...