Shotgun Bunny, creator of XBLGlitchforums.com, talks with Steve519 about his website and lets us know what is going on over there and what you can except to see in the future.

To download either (right click, save as) here

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you can subscribe to The XBL Radio Extra’s feed by clicking the image.

Alright everyone I recieved my Vision Camera today. I was going to do a video review for it, with everything from hook up to changing settings to video chatting BUT Major already beat me to it. So instead I will do a review for you and let you know some of the good and bad. Ok, to start off, this thing is the easiest to setup.

All you have to do is plug it in, thats it, nothing more. Once you do that your up and running. You can tell its working by looking at your dashboard background, you should see a watery type of effect, thats because its taking the what your camera see’s and applying it to your background all faded out and with special effects.

Now to do video chats, all you have to do there is look at the person you wanna video chat with and send them a video chat invite, its that easy. While in video chats, the bumbers change special effects, X goes to the options menu which will allow you to change the lighting and color settings, and the triggers vibrate the other persons controller. You can also select zoom which will allow you to zoom in on a section of the screen at you can pick up to 2x. And thats it for video chat.

To send pictures, all you have to do is select the person that you wanna send a picture to, you go to send message, take picture and from there you can zoom in and take a picture. After you take a picture it then will allow you add special effects. Once your done you can throw in voice, text or nothing at all and send out the picture. Again its that simple.

As for videos while in games, ie uno, spades ect. it seems on by default and so far you seem to be able to zoom in 4x in games (probably do to the smaller amount of screen space you have while in games)

Now for the bad stuff, no auto focus, so you have to manually get up off your ass and rotate the ring on the camera, that kind of sucks. If you wanna video chat, you have to end whatever game your in, you can not video chat in the background like you can do with audio chats, and that really sucks. Where is Totemball, it was suppose to be out of the 19th for those who have the camera but its not, I really wanted to try that. And last but not least, you can not save your pictures, I don’t know if this was overlooked or they just didn’t wany you to do this but this is not an option.
I do have to say the positives by far out weigh the minus and I would recommend to everyone I know, to pick one of these up, its a really cool addition to the Xbox 360. So if you get one and wanna video chat with someone, go ahead and see if I’m online, I would be happy to videochat with you.

-Steve519

And for those of you with kids, Major Nelson posted a Vision Camera post that involves the family settings that I think you really should look into to help protect your kids. Here is the link.

BTW, stay tuned to the XBLRadio.com website because we will be giving another one away shortly

Our 5 Gamer chiX’s indlude Frantic PMS, QoC, GamergirlSB, Worried Weasel and Catalina PMS.

• This super packed show talks about Saints Row from the ladies perspective.
• Microsofts approach to women: Is there more they can do?
• Girl Exclusive Lobbys and Gamer Zones: Are they necessary?
• Why no WNBA or Womens World Cup Games?
• Fewer female characters in the latest game releases: Why?
• XBL Arcade titles or full CD titles? Which do they play more?
• This, and whatever else the conversation brings up!

Here is the direct download link, click here (right click, save as). Â

To subscribe to the podcast you can click on one of these…

 ~ ~ ~

Shout out to Trixie for hooking us up with the wonderful Xbox gamerchiX. Come talk about the show in our forums.

A new program that hit the market recently has many podcast fans excited and ironicly has upset many podcasters.

XBStream is a free-ware program that allows you to stream audio and text xml based feeds to your Xbox 360 video game console.

This program comes pre-installed with many of your favorite Xbox related RSS feeds, including yours truely, XBL Radio along with GamerAndy and Gamertag Radio among the giants of 1up, IGN, OXM and Major Nelson.

The drawback is that once installed, the program defaults to auto download the THIRTY most recent items on EACH feed. After just a few hours of installation, your hard drive will be raided with up to 30 Gigs of blog entries and podcasts.

So why are the podcasters upset? Isn’t this great new publicity?  Well… when thousands of people start downloading several dozen 20-40+ Megabyte files all at once, it tends to shut down servers. Our sever had over 42,000 hits with over 500 gigs of bandwith in less than 48 hours. We are currently out of commission.

We don’t know when we’ll be back up. We don’t know when XB Stream will fix this. We don’t know HOW XB Stream will fix this. There apprears to be no update feature on the program. How are we gonna tell the thousands of people who have already downloaded it to remove our feed? How are we gonna stop more people from downloading it? The XBLR Podcast Feed is F#$%ED untill further notice.

Check out what GamerAndy had to say about it! And some more interesting talk in the XBStream Forms.

I did a show last week with Godfree from GamerTagRadio, its another cool Xbox podcast, if you wanna check it out (which you should) here is the link http://www.gamertagradio.com/

And here are the show notes for this show: We are back with a new episode this week. The Gamertag Radio staff and our guest Steve from XBLRadio.com had the chance to have a roundtable discussion on Sony Online verse Xbox Live. What are our thoughts about the PS3 news & Viva Pinata is it worth or not to buy it this holiday season.

Listen to our Viva Pinata interview with Microsoft. They gave us a sneak preview of the game and more only on GTR!

Ben Heck builds his very own Xbox 360 laptop! He gives you 5 full webpages of his detailed step by step process with tons of photos. This is not Ben’s first portable console project. Heck has built every portable gaming console you could imagine from an Atari to an N64 and many more. It does not appear to be able to run on a battery, but that does not take away how cool this would be to own. And speaking of “cool”, Ben built a custom water-cooled radiator system keeping this stove top, ice cold. I can’t imagine how much he could get for this on eBay, but I have a feeling it’s not for sale.Â

A friend of mine asked back in May “Can you build an Xbox 360 laptop?” And I responded “Sure, can you pay for it?” He agreed, and thus I set forth on what was surely to be my most complex and insanely ridiculous videogame project yet.

Uses a 17″ wide (diagonal) 1280×720 progressive-scan LCD VGA monitor (for HD-level resolutions). Water-cooled with custom-built radiator. Built-in keyboard and Wi-Fi. USB hub allows original number of 3 USB ports for user. Uses single customized “expanded” power supply brick for both screen and Xbox 360. 16.75″ x 10.75″ x 2.8″ Weight: 14 pounds (with water loaded)

Shoutout to XBLife.com for the heads up!

-Rust.

Alright you can win an Xbox 360 Live Vision Camera for free. Its really simple, all you have to do is win a XBL Radio sponsored Texas Hold’em Tournament. It will start this up coming Saturday, continue Sunday, and then again next Saturday so as you see it will just go during the weekend. One round a day, starting at 5pm PST. So if you would like to enter, all you have to do is reply in the Xbl Radio FORUM post about this topic with your gamertag. Its that simple, be sure to read that post fully though because it has all the rules for the tournament. If you have any questions feel free to ask, you can ask here on this blog or you can email me at Steve@xblradio.com BUT don’t email me your gamertag, I want them all centerlized, that way I don’t lose anyone’s gamertag that wants to enter. So good luck to ya, and don’t forget to get our latest XBL Radio show buy clicking the “Get Our Podcast” link at the top of the page, because that is the reason why we are doing this contest, to inform new people about our awesome show.

And for those who didn’t see the forum link above here it is again

The “McGruff” character that warned kids to “take a bite out of crime” is now asking today’s youth to do the same for online criminals

In conjunction with Intel, McAfee, Verisign, and others, the National Crime Prevention Council is working with nonprofit marketing group The CMO Council to promote a “mass immunization” of PCs, the establishment of a educational web site, and the creation of a cadre of 20,000 “Junior CyberGuards” to help defeat online predators and other criminals.
According to Jennifer Heisler, who has managed the McGruff Network, the canine law enforcement

character will be used to highlight the dangers of viruses, online predators, phishing attempts, and other combinations of automated attacks and criminal online behaviors. The organization claims that 70 percent of all children online under age 14 are contacted by an online predator.
“We looked at it to bring the prevention angle to the messaging,” Heisler said. “There’s a lot of stuff out there, with online threats, as well as physical threats. We wanted to focus on the prevention side, rather than cleaning up afterwards.” She described the program as “taking McGruff to the next level”.

In October, consumers will be called to action to secure their PCs, in conjunction with security software vendor McAfee. Security software will be offered at discounts to those participating in the program, although Don Scott, the chief operating officer of the CMO, said the exact discounts have yet to be determined. McAfee’s SiteAdvisor will be available for free, he said.
The campaign is already being funneled through ByteCrime.org, an educational website that is already up in beta form. The site is designed to be a “robust information center” about threats in the digital world, Scott said.
Finally, 20,000 kids will be anointed “Junior CyberGuards,” training their family and friends in how to secure their PCs, and walking them through the steps to do so. No incentives are currently planned for the volunteers, although that may change, Scott said.
Intel is providing support for the initiative through the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, as well as reaching out to the Latino population. USA Today and CNET are contributing print and online ads, respectively. The program is still seeking more sponsors, Scott said.

Hope you all had a great weekend. I wasn’t gaming too much. My son had his 8th birthday. To see images of our “Wild-Party” go to my Flickr Site…
(Look out K Rock, Alexander’s party got as wild as yours!)

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