Xbox Friends Thing - New version on the horizon.

<>I’ve got the next release of Xbox Friends Thing just about ready to be released to the general public. Now that there are over 2300 people using it, I’ve got to be a bit more careful about what I release ;-). Currently, there are about 10 people testing the latest build and so far it’s looking promising (beta is limited to those people who are on my Windows/MSN Messenger contact list).

I’m going to give it a couple more days of testing with the private beta testers; however, here’s a list of some of the new features:

• Detailed game play statistics view for each friend.
• Sound associated with notifications.
• Automatically start with Windows option.
• Several new option to customize different behaviors.

Here is a small list of some of the fixes (and/or modifications):

• Web Services bug that was occurring on some machines.
• Removed Friend Message filling up screen.
• Rogue timing issue occurring at launch bug that was occurring on some machines.
• Removed notifications at initial launch.
• Changes made to handle Microsoft changing the name of some of the games.
• Moved Web Service to XboxFriends.com.
• Saving state information for the status bar and PrimeTime display.

There’s actually a lot more changes that have taken place. For a complete list of changes, refer to the change log.

I’ve also added a new category for Xbox; this category will be used on all future Xbox related entries.