If you've browsed MajorNelson.com via the site (instead of the RSS feeds) in the past couple of months you may have noticed the "Marketplace" link up in the top navigation. This links off to our Marketplace blog, which pulls data on all of the content that goes up on Xbox Live directly from feeds on Xbox.com and tags them based on all sorts of meta data we can associate it with it based on the types of requests we're making.
All of this means that you can easily use it to drill far down into the pile of content based on "Tags" we assign to it, and from there you can do whatever you like with that data like say tossing it into an RSS feed; so here are the easy to follow steps to getting all of the content you want syndicated how you want:
- Hit http://marketplace.majornelson.com
- You'll see on the top of the page the "Tag Cloud", which shows the 100 most frequently used Tags
- Start first with the region from which you want to pull content, so if you're trying to get content from the United States then click "United States", after that you can ignore any other region tags that may be in the tag cloud unless you want content only present in two or more specific regions
- Now you want to select the type of content you want to pull down, of which there are currently:
- Game Add-Ons
- Game Demos
- Full Games
- Gamer Pictures and Themes
- Videos
- Movies
- Music Videos
- TV Shows
- Xbox 360 Games
- Xbox Live Arcade Games
- Xbox Community Games
- Xbox Originals
- Based on the type of content you select there may be additional tags you can filter by, so say you chose "TV Shows" you will see specific TV shows in the tag list or if you chose "Music Videos" you will see specific artists in the list of tags
- Once you drill down far enough, if you would like to aggregate these results into a dynamic RSS feed click the "(RSS)" link at the end of the breadcrumbs; this will then show you the RSS feed constructed with the 16 most recent pieces of content that match your criteria
- Feel free to assemble several of these RSS feeds to get a list of specific content that you want to see!
Enjoy!
Blah blah, blog, blah blah, haven't in almost a year, blah blah, might start blogging more blah blah or maybe not. Ok, glad we got that out of the way.
As I'm sure anybody reading this knows, the super-mega-humungous-important E3 was last week and if you've kept up on any of the coverage all around the internet you'll for certain realize that it's back to the old school spectacle that was E3 2006 (ok, maybe not quite there yet but still awesome none the less). So the stage was set for some serious announcements to be made which they were and then some. I'm sure anybody reading this knows all about the great news that came out of E3, so I'll cut to the chase of what was my E3 experience:
May 31st
- Ate dinner with e, Stepto, Jaken Bear, mechANGEL, SpaceGhost2k, Knuckles Dawson, and DjDatz @ the Daily Grill; which mainly encompassed everybody at the table tweeting about the exact same things
June 1st (Xbox Press Briefing Day)
- Got in to the Galen center about an hour before the briefing started
- Got setup backstage to make sure none of the majornelson.com hampsters failed (Shadowed Ghost was tending to the chat server hampsters)
- Did a little walk through of the backstage area, and literally walked right next to Steven Speilburg after he prepared for his little bit on stage
- Met with Marc Whitten in one of these private rooms they had setup in the rear of the Galen Center
- Saw the amazing setup of all the equipment they had backstage
- Saw the press briefing (albeit with divided attention between the live blog and the chat)
- Went to the very small blogger lunch and info session Marc did and saw him announce/demo the Instant-Streaming, Full Game downloads, Avatar Marketplace, and this kind of centralized music center that tied in with Last.fm
- Ate dinner with e, Stepto, H2O Rip, mechANGEL, PMS Kitty, and this dude who works for AMD whose gamertag I do not know
- Went to the "Evening at the Standard" Microsoft held to show off all of the games they were going to show on the expo floor; played Firefight with Major, and (I believe) with some Bungie folks as well. Also went up to the roof of the standard and hit this pretty awsome that had a bunch of Xbox, and Harmonix folks there with The Beatles: Rock Band there for anyone to play (saw Don Matrick, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse aka "McLovin" from Superbad and their respective entourages rock it out)
- Ended it all with a looooong walk back with Knuckles to our hotel
June 2nd (Expo Day 1)
- Got up fasionably late, which worked out seeing as the show didn't open as early the first day
- Registered for my "Industry Affiliate" badge after being hastled a little bit by the lady I was talking to (but thanks to my MVP lead's prudence it wasn't really an issue)
- Rolled into the show floor and did a little wandering before showing up at the Xbox booth
- Got inside the booth with Major, lollip0p, and DMZilla
- Esentially was dragged (not that I'm complaining!) into a small room on the second floor with nothing but lights, a TV, Natal and whatever it was running on, and an Xbox 360; met the presenter who gave me a five second run down of how to control the game he was using to demo Natal (Burnout) and then proceeded to have me "Jump In" ;)
- I just put my hands up like I was driving and then stepped forward to mimmick stepping on a gas pedal and away I went, not calibration or configuration what-so-ever
- Worked perfectly with the lights off, and was sensetive enough to even the slightest of turns
- There are unconfirmed reports of my jaw also hitting the floor
- Yes, it really works that well; seriously
- Pretty sure I spent most of the rest of the day at the Expo just saying how awesome Natal was, no seriously, I'm not kidding
- Got in to see Harmonix's presentation on The Beatles: Rock Band thanks to lollip0p
- Got dinner with Major and lollip0p (who explained a couple of questions that were really bothering me)
- Went to this Forza Motorsport 3 party, took pictures of all the cars that were there (and got in that Audi they had on stage at the briefing!) and left to try and get some sleep
June 3rd (Expo Day 2)
- Spent a pretty good portion of the day trying to get of the top scores in Need for Speed: Shift, in order to win the BMW M3 they were giving away (Didn't come close though unfortunately)
- Watched a few of the demos Xbox folk were doing around their booth for Instant-On HD Streaming and presentations on 1vs100
- Went to the Tweetup at In-N-Out and got to say high to a few members of the Xbox community local to LA
- Went to a Games for Windows and Windows 7 party thrown by none other than Tony Hynes (Basteylon), Chris Paladino (CPaladino), and Nelson Rodriguez; was great to catch up with these guys (and they are doing awesome)
June 4th (Expo Day 3)
- Strolled onto the show floor fashionably late
- Played a bunch of the games that were around the Xbox booth
- Did a little wandering around the other side of the hall with e (The atmosphere over there was quite a bit different)
- Hit up Video Games Live (but alas, didn't bring my camera), with tickets that were front and center (Thanks to SpaceGhost2k for the tix!)
Seeing as I was lucky enough to attend E3 2006 and can say in comparison this year was amazing. It wasn't at all crowded, even though there were some wait times in some of the lines. Microsoft's announcements were huge, which is in itself awesome but they also had everything I can think of available to at least see in person if not available to try yourself. The games were awesome (seriously Alan Wake blew my mind), and the atmosphere was awesome. While some companies' press briefings were bland or just not well orchestrated; it was nice to see that everybody is still working on innovating in unique ways, and I'm sure we will see an even more great news come TGS.