So it’s coming.  It wants you to be all social and stuff.  It is the Fall Xbox 360 update for 2009.

This update has had the usual fanfare.  The MajorNelson twitters, updates to his site, Kotaku reviews, podcast mentions, what have you.  I signed up for the Xbox Dashboard Update Preview Program a week or two ago, figured I would give it a shot since I made the cut one other time as well.  I made the cut, but was never notified, even though I know all my contact details are correct in Microsoft Connect (their beta testing portal).  I only discovered that I was in because I turned on my Xbox on Friday and suddenly I had a system update….ok then.

The update itself didn’t take painfully long, I’d say 5 or so minutes.  Upon reboot of the Xbox I noticed nothing different.  Upon searching other context blades, menus, whatever you call them, I discovered under Community two new ones for Facebook and Twitter.  There was also a new blade for Zune Marketplace, which had the Last.fm module in it.  I’ll take them in turn below.

Last.fm – For some reason I thought these would all be part of the update, however I discovered it did require a small download, similar to the Netflix add-on that was released earlier this year.  After downloading the application, I launched it, using my last.fm account credentials for an account that already existed.  It immediately brought up all the stations and artists I usually listen to on the last.fm website.  Seamless.  Navigating was swift and it started streaming almost at once.  This is all over a 15/5Mbps connection mind you.  If you are on old old DSL your mileage may vary.  Overall I was very impressed with the add-on, and it performed well beyond my expectations.  One niggle though, you cannot do anything else on the Xbox while it is running, which I’ll address again below.  Sure you can bring up the center button menu and do stuff in those blades, but you can’t say…go browse something else.

Twitter – Again, download a little app, run it, enter in your account info, and it just works.  I was able to tweet, browse over other people’s stuff, view their details.  What I wish it had (that I’m submitting to MS Connect as a feature request): The ability to tweet from the messaging blade on the center button menu.  Other than that, it worked great, just remember you can only do Twitter and nothing else.  Organization and style were almost identical to the Twitter site.

Facebook – Download the app, run, account info (repetitive much, where’s my Single Sign On?).  Worked good enough, things were sorted in the Xbox Dashboard context menu style.  It dishes out the basic info, and you can write on people’s walls, update your status and such, but overall I didn’t see the attraction.   Given that I already have Facebook available on multiple computers and my phone, there are plenty of other opportunities to get this experience.  It is functional and fast though.

Overall, the update looks good.  I found all the apps to be easy to use, technically sound and speedy, their usefulness in everyday life still to be determined.  At the point of this writing, the beta preview program is closed and as far as I’m aware will remain so until release.  Look for this update coming to an Xbox near you in the very near future.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

UPDATE (on the update?) 11/13/2009:  Latest reports put the dashboard update as mentioned above will be released to your hot little xboxen on November 17th.

1 Comment »

1. 

   I added your blog to bookmarks. And i’ll read your articles more often!

   Comment by Kouba — November 4, 2009 @ 6:11 am

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