Try It Out

Earlier this week, Microsoft released a few add-ons to its XBox Live. These include Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm, all of which are accessible via XBox Live. I was initially excited to try these new features out but to my dismay, you had to be a Gold subscriber while I was only a Silver. Then, while browsing a website that I usually visit, I came across an article saying that this weekend starting Friday at 12pm, all XBox Live SILVER subscribers will be able to access Gold features for free until Sunday.

So today I connected to XBox Live as usual but nothing seemed different. Everything said that I was still a Silver subscriber but I decided to give facebook a try anyway. Surprisingly, it worked. I was able to put in my facebook log in info and there it was, facebook on my TV. It wasn't your average facebook either. It was highly customized to make it an entirely new experience rather than just facebook.com on your TV. It is integrated with your XBox Live account which means you can request facebook friends or are on XBox Live or vice versa.


Twitter is also customized but considering Twitter isn't all that exciting anyway, it wasn't that different. Each "tweet" shows up in a cloud, as does everything else. I'm actually playing around with it for the first time as I am typing this and everything seems to be clouds and birds, which makes sense I guess.


The final add-on (that I know of) is Last.fm. The best way I can describe this is with Pandora. It is basically Pandora on a TV. You can type in an artist or song and it will give you a station for what you searched. Surprisingly, it sounds really good. The quality of the music isn't nearly as bad as I expected. I can see people using this as their primary radio at home especially for those who have surround sound hooked up. Again, I am using this as I am typing this entry. One of the featured stations is Lady Gaga Radio. I just clicked it and the first song to come on is "Boys Boys Boys" by, of course, Lady Gaga. As the song plays, pictures of her are appearing on screen in a slide show fashion. Since I am not the biggest Lady Gaga fan, let's see whats next when I skip. It's a song by Heidi Montag from "The Hills" on MTV, another artist I am not a fan of but you get the idea.



Aside from being able to try these features out, I am also given the ability to play my games online until the end of the weekend...which is probably what I am going to do now. Maybe I'll try that social game, 1 vs 100.

By the way, the next song to come on after I let the Heidi song play through is "Kiss The Girl" from The Little Mermaid sung by Ashley Tisdale. This station really isn't winning me over too well...