Category: Xbox Live

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Bing Bing Rewards blog Firefox Internet Internet Explorer Marketplace Microsoft Mozilla Xbox Xbox Live Zune

Musings about Bing rewards program

The other day I saw a Google ad that said the following.

“Get 400 Free Xbox Points
Get 400 Free Xbox Points. Join Bing Rewards!
www.Bing.com/Rewards”

I was intrigued as I’d like to get some Microsoft points so I can buy some arcade games on my Xbox 360. The only issue I have with this ad is it sounds like you can get 400 Microsoft points just for joining the Bing rewards program. To get the 400 Microsoft points you need to have 400 search rewards points. Apparently from what I’ve read when they first launched the program you could redeem 100 search rewards points for 100 Microsoft points. I guess Microsoft realized this was to low of a number because they give you 250 search rewards points just for signing up for the program.

If you do the daily search items first they will also count towards the total number of searches that will earn you points as well. At the moment I’m writing this they seem to have two daily searches worth 3 points each & until January 29th 2011 you can earn one point per search up to a max of 10. So the current maximum you can earn a day is 16 points, which would take you 25 days at that rate to earn 400 search rewards points. But if you want to earn the first 400 search rewards points you can get that done in 10 days with your bonus 250 search rewards points that you start with.

One more thing before I rant about the installation process of the Bing bar. According to the Bing Rewards Preview Frequently Asked Questions “The Bing Rewards Preview ends on September 30, 2011. Credits accumulated expire December 31, 2011.”. So you have a limit amount of time to earn the points. Also remember that the Microsoft points rewarded from this method are only good for a limited time after you receive them from the program, so spend them shortly after you get them.

Now on to some of the issues I have with this program. First it installs three add-ons Mozilla Firefox Which if you are running the current version of Firefox they will be disabled right after they are installed, I haven’t tested with older versions as I refuse to run old versions of Firefox. They disabled the items because Microsoft said in Bing Bar support for Mozilla Firefox to disable them to prevent a security issue. While I applaud Mozilla for disabling them I’m irritated at Microsoft for installing software that they know will be disabled on install. When I last read the article it said “Article ID: 2430460 – Last Review: October 5, 2010 – Revision: 3.0”, meaning that they have known about this issue for several months at the point when I installed the Bing bar on my computer, & yet they insisted on installing the software they knew would be disabled.

You can see a complete list of what add-ons the current version of Firefox will disable on install at Add-ons Blocklist | Mozilla. At the time I wrote this post the first three in the list are the add-ons that the Bing bar installs. They are Bing Bar for Firefox, Default Manager v2.2, & Search Helper Extension.

I will admit I haven’t found a way yet to remove it from just Firefox. I have done some basic searches, but I have found nothing yet that will remove it only from Firefox. I have found ways to remove it from Firefox & Internet Explorer at Removing the Search Helper Extension and Bing Bar though.

Also during the install of the Bing bar it insisted that I close both Firefox as well as Internet Explorer. I closed Firefox on my own so that I would be sure to not lose the tabs that I had opened. It did reopen Internet Explorer after it finished & I was given my bonus 250 search rewards points.

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Microsoft Xbox Xbox Live

USB Memory Support for the Xbox 360 coming April 6th

I was checking out Major Nelson’s blog When I noticed a post with the same name that I gave this post “USB Memory Support for the Xbox 360 coming April 6th”. I was excited by this as I won’t have to pay for overpriced memory cards anymore on the 360. I was very excited when I saw the following pictures in the group that he posted & linked from the article (first picture & second picture), yep 293 GB free which means either he was on a dev kit or they may have a larger hard drive in the works for us in the future.

After I & most likely many other of his followers asked him about this he replied in his twitter “FYI : The pics I have posted on Flickr of the USB support are from my dev kit. For those asking.”. So unfortunately it was on his dev kit so for the near future we are limited to a 250 GB hard drive which is overpriced, but we won’t need to pay extra for external storage & we won’t be restricted to 512 MB as we have for many years on the Xbox 360. I guess this is good news for anyone that plans to or currently uses an Xbox 360 in a vehicle as the hard drive & optical drive both have moving parts so you could in theory download games to one or more memory cards & have your gamer tag in a memory unit so that you get to miss out on the issues associated with the hard drive. I also wonder if this would be a good thing for those in the military as they could grab their gamer tag along with some other data to take with them in a small & easy to carry method that would be able to deal with more abuse the a hard drive would normally.

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Indie Games Microsoft Xbox Xbox Live

Indie games on Xbox360 require connection to Live

I saw a recent tweet from XboxSupport that said "@carocat 2 play Indie Games, u must be connected 2 Xbox LIVE 2 start it. After it starts+loads, u can disconnect from LIVE if u want to. ^KS". After seeing them saying that I went & tested it with a single player game called Miner Dig Deep, where I found what they said to be true.

This is annoying for me as if I take my 360 to a location where I don’t have an Internet connection I can’t even open the game. All I get is a message that says "To play this game, sign in to Xbox Live.", with the option to sign in or not to sign in.

I’d like it changed so that I’m allowed to have the offline parts work without being signed into live. I’d also like achievement points to be available for the indie games as well. I know I’ve bought some arcade games because they said I could keep an achievement that I earned in the trial of the game.

The other thing I’d like to see is being able to remove any rating I’ve put on a game. I have one time accidentally rated a game that I hadn’t even played & that made me want to be able to remove the rating I had applied to it. Even if it was implemented in the web site first or only in the web site that would be better than not being able to remove a rating.

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Games for Windows - LIVE Microsoft Tinker Windows Xbox Live

Issues with Tinker from Games for Windows – LIVE

Well about two weeks ago I installed Tinker from Games for Windows – LIVE. It is an interesting puzzle game. It was released previously for people who purchased Windows Vista Ultimate. You have a timer, can only make a certain number of moves, & on some levels have to get all the gears to get an achievement in the game. After performing certain tasks you receive achievements that are viewable to everyone.

If you look at my gamer card on the left you should see that I have played it & earned most of the achievements so far. I hope to get the remaining three in the future.

My first issue with the game is that to install it I have to manually start the Windows Firewall which is frequently disabled if you install a third-party software firewall. So it is a good game just a really annoying issue to be able to install it on my computer.

It looks like they fixed my second issue with the game. The requirements page had claimed that the 59 MB download needed 9 GB of disk space. Which made me wonder, do they think this is Fallout 3 or some other blockbuster title.

My third issue is that when I earn achievements in the game it doesn’t always update my gamer tag. Right now it is displaying all the achievements that I have earned so far, but is has been buggy in updating my profile. One time even though I was connected to live on my computer I had to close out the game & the client, then restart them so that I could get my achievements updated.

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blog Microsoft Nintendo Wii Xbox Xbox Live

The Wii & friends codes

Well I really hate the way that the Wii does friends codes. Such a pain, oh well I guess I’ll deal with it.

My code is 0237 3199 4147 6328. The way you find it is by going to messages on your Wii to the address book. The directions are so long they get their own paragraph.

It’s the envelope in the bottom right corner, then to “Create message” in the bottom left, then you go to the address book on the right side & you should see your code, then to become friends with someone you give them that code & they give you theirs & you add it to the address book. You take the number you were given & go to the Address book & use the “+” & “-” signs to select a page, then select an entry you want to add them to (They just need to be in there somewhere.) You enter their cryptic code & add a nick name so you know who in the world that cryptic code belongs to. After they have done the same you are now friends. (Just like Xbox Live you are restricted to 100 friends, but unlike it you have a cryptic code instead of a name like my gamer tag “joecr”. My gamer tag is pronounced as you would Joker.)

Now I just need to get codes & get people to tell me theirs.