I saw a simply awesome looking retro gaming T-Shirt today that I just about bought (even though it was $20 + shipping)… here is a image from their site:
Why didn’t I buy it you ask???? Here’s another image:
Archive for the ‘announcements’ Category
Know your classics… fer real.
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009Lots of work behind the Scenes recently
Friday, March 27th, 2009There have been quite a few changes behind the scenes recently, mostly to facilitate two things:
1. Some folks were oddly enough using the signatures on porn sites. Unfortunately, every time a sig is displayed I link to the display location. XBL messages were sent to request the use of the sigs there to be discontinued. And 1 week later, code and the ability to modify the sig was put in place. Use the sig on porn sites and you will be embarresed.
2. Is the most exciting, I’ve begun gathering achievements from xbox live for games. You’ll start seeing these displayed as time allows me to grab them. For now, I’m working on new games and grabing older games as time allows— oldest to newest.
There have been other minor changes to facilitate crawling of google along with some SEO optimizations as well as the purchase of a better domain name to more closely resemble what the site is evolving into… more than just gamer signatures.
Win a Xbox 360… For real!!!
Monday, March 23rd, 2009Ok folks, I know most of you probably already have an Xbox 360 but with the RROD ever of the horizon a person could always use a spare— right?!?!?!
I write a VBScript blog over at a site called the IT Knowledge Exchange and they are running a promotion now where if you answer questions and ask questions you earn “knowledge points”, The 3 people with the highest points between now and April 30th will win an Xbox 360 console.
I personally have won prize in a contest here before and I can vouch for the fact that you do in fact get your prizes… so If you know about Information technology, or If you have questions about it, head on over there and sign up to win an Xbox 360!!
Game on!!!
Genre updates @360Voice = Work for us XML samurai’s — not anymore!
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009I finally got around to updating the code to recognize the Genre updates at 360Voice for the List of Games… what a pain. So I put in a little effort and the next Genre Update at 360Voice should be Automatic. So we won’t have to wait on me to update the site, it’ll update when the games at 360voice get updated.
Plus, a side benefit of this is that genre changes (when a game gets moved from one to the other) get updated too! This is a big benefit because I’ve been adding games not in a genre to genres where I thought they should go. Now 360Voice’s Genre’s will override that.
As an additional Side benefit… when new DLC becomes available and the Total Achievements or Total Gamer Score changes it will update as well.
The Final update was a couple of our own genres… like:
Enjoy!
Wired Guitar Hero Guitar for $9.99 — and it’s from Red Octane, not EBAY!
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008I thought I’d pass this little gem along to those of you who might need another guitar for Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero : World Tour, or Rock Band 2. I have one of these and they work fine on all the games mentioned… and for $10… you just can’t beat the price!
Guitar Hero Wired X-plorer Guitar for Xbox 360 - $9.99 each (while supplies last)
Or optionally, if you have a PS2 still you can get Guitar Hero III for the PS2– really cheap!
Guitar Hero 3 Bundle for PS2 - $29.99 after SAVE20 code (expires 12/31/08)
More features on their way!… Video Game REVIEWS
Monday, September 15th, 2008I’m working on two things right now for the site as a by product of no longer having to worry about space used on the drive. They are:
- “A voting mechanism”, no not for gamersigs– but that’s a good idea too!
- Video Game reviews.
The second is the one is what I’m unveiling tonight. It’s called One-Hour reviews and the basic premise is explained in the first post in the blog, but to elaborate on what you can expect from the reviews is:
- Brutal honesty in what the bloggers think about the game (yes, there’s more than one. If you’d like to blog about games you purchase send me a freind request and I’ll get you an account setup)
- Humor
- A mini walk through of the hour I played the game, including achievment points earned!
- The writer’s thoughts on if you should buy the game or not.
First up is Star Wars: The Force Unleased.
We have a New Hosting provider at gamersigs.net… ME!
Friday, September 12th, 2008Well, hopefully you didn’t notice the day before yesterday but we now have a new hosting provider… and I can tell you they are much better than our old provider, MyDomains. ME! Since I’m a Web Administrator by trade– there really is no reason to host the site elsewhere. Especially since the number of clicks that adsense receives doesn’t seem to pay the bills. Have you considered clicking on one our sponsors? 
We’re now on Two dedicated web and SQL Servers, rather than the slower shared servers. Astonishingly I noticed they were running close to 200 databases on the SQL Server the site was previously located on… no wonder it was so slow!
The pages seem to come up much faster now and I’m quite pleased with the outcome, and if I don’t like the performance I’ll always be able to get someone smart enough to understand what I need done to help me out. The other positive thing is this gives me the ability to schedule jobs and tasks to run periodically, which should help make things a little better.
Nintendo’s Wii joins the forces of systems in my collection
Monday, August 4th, 2008Well, I recently traded in a BUNCH of records I had in my basement from my prior EBay days and got nearly $180 in credit at Vintage Stock, then traded in a few NES games along with an extra Gamecube… the result being I had more than enough trade credit for a Nintendo Wii!
So, now I’ve added a Nintendo Wii to the game system collection… The wife and kids love it. It’s OK and fun enough I guess, but I haven’t seen anything on there that amazes me beyond the 360. I haven’t played twilight princess yet… but got side tracked after I popped it in and loaded a game save.
With the addition of a Nintendo Wii at the homestead, look for some widening of the signatures scope beyond just xbox360 signatures in the coming weeks, especially since my personal roofing project is now complete.
In the mean time, check out the Dark Knight fan art signature created late last week. If you like one of the signatures there, go on over and create a Xbox360 signature.
Well… July 4th is here!
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008Yes, the 4th of July is here and there hasn’t been much done on the site lately because I’ve been putting a roof on a house– and doing roof structural repairs on top of it. (Since MEMORIAL DAY)
I’ve managed to get some gaming in and watch the traffic on the site. I’ve had time to think about some other features I want to add to the site. Go on over to the forums and check out my feature brainstorm post there. Go ahead and post your ideas there and we’ll see what we can do. (You’ll need to register, but We will NOT share your information or use it to spam you or send you marketing/sales e-mails)
Quite a few people have found the site! Some of you are even using our signatures in the forums!!! Thank you for that, it’s a key part of making the site grow. Just a reminder, if you use the signature on a forum (or anywhere else– because we’ll see where you use it) please do place a link back to us and to 360voice letting people know who makes the signature for you (and who makes the data available for us to do so). I’ve seen some people doing it and some people not. I’m hesitant to place a watermark on the signature, but might have to since the signatures are a key part of the marketing for the site. (Basically, word of mouth)
Doing so will drive traffic to the site, get our name out there, and through traffic generate ad revenue (yes, I know… it sucks but someone has to pay to keep the lights on.)
We’re Live!
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008Ok. Not a lot has been done in the last week or so because I’ve been in the hot sun (and wet rain) on a leaky roof doing repairs (No, replacement) of the shingles each weekend. However, I think we’ve come far enough to call it good because all I’ve worked on for some time is new features.
So this morning I said “we’re live”. You can feel safe using the gamer sigs in forums. The only thing we request is that you leave the link back to us (and 360voice) intact in some manner when you use the signature. You can feel free to reword the BBEcode or rework it, so long as there is a link to both us and 360voice.
The other thing I’ve done is to add in the statistics bar (that is on every page) the LAST signature displayed’s gamer tag with a link to their 360voice blog and to display the same link and their gamersignature on the front page. The goals of this are:
- Highlight the signatures on the site in a dynamic psuedo-random fashion.
- Highlight the user displaying the signature out in the world.
- Drive traffic to their blog to raise their ranking in the 360voice Top 20 gamertags
Here are a few items to know about how it works:
- The last signature displayed is driven by using the displaysig.aspx?gamertag link provided when you create a signature, so it only works when you use the dynamic page to display the signature. (Which BTW is also how the signature gets updated each day, so there’s no value in using the image link by itself)
- Since it changes EACH time a user’s sig is displayed it is very fluid.
- The best way to ensure your name stays on the front page is to use the signature in forums and other high traffic sites.
- Post more meaningful posts in forums, so that people read them more– thereby displaying your signature.
- Post in lost of different places so that traffic in each location will trigger the display of your signature.
- be involved in the community where you use the signature so that there is ample opportunity for your signature to be displayed.
Good luck and enjoy the signatures!