GameSpoon - Protect your Xbox Live Account

People, this is a real issue that could have a very negative affect on your Xbox Live experience, and I'm not talking about the new interface. IGN wrote up an article about a real hacked event that occurred to one of their journalists, Dan 'Shoe' Hsu.

In this article, Dan explains what happened to him and how he found out that his account was hacked! It's important to know that you may have been hacked and not even know about it. Please consider Dan's (IGNs) seven tips to protect your account:

Seven tips to avoid being hacked on Xbox Live - courtesy of IGN.com

Here are a few things you should do to protect your Xbox Live account, compiled from other users (special thanks to MDK x2002x), my own experiences, and Stephen Toulouse:

1. Don't answer your secret question with the real answer. Instead, select something completely unrelated (for example, First Pet = Will Tuttle) that you can remember, effectively giving you a second password.


2. In the "address 2" line of your profile [My Account - Contact Info], put down: "XBOX SUPPORT DO NOT ASSIST WITH ACCOUNT RECOVERY" to help automatically raise a red flag when a customer support rep looks up your account.


3. If you're planning on gaming away from your default console, put your account on a memory card or move it with your hard drive, as opposed to recovering it on another machine.


4. Never reveal any personal details about yourself while gaming over Xbox Live.
   On that same note, go ahead and leave your profile's bio blank. No need to tell everyone where you live.


5. Limit the amount of information you put out there for everyone to see on social networking sites...or any website for that matter. Especially ones where you also have your Gamertag listed.


6. Create an Xbox Live passcode if you haven't already. To do this, select "My Xbox" on the Xbox dashboard and go to your profile, then go to "Account Management" then "Xbox Live Pass Code."


7. And try to keep track of your purchases on Xbox Live as well as your Microsoft Points balance, so if you ever do get hacked (knock on wood), you'll be able to help customer service facilitate your refunds more efficiently.

TuneSpoon - Early 80's Rap + Football = Ram It

This may change your life.

"Ram it. We know how to ram it. Let's Ram It. We know how to ram it. We be rockin L.A., so let's ram it today....... Let's Ram It"

GameSpoon - Fable 2 DLC

Lionhead has announced DLC for Fable 2 today! For 800 MS points, you'll be able to download "Knothole Island" and gain new quests, new gear and meet new people.

Some of the features of this DLC will include:

• 3 new quests


• new outfits - armored knight, assassin, barbarian, leather-clad biker (yep, no joke) and more


• 6 new weapons - finally!


• new potions


• a new augment tool with new augments! This should be good.

Read more about it at Lionhead Studios

GameSpoon - NXE and Netflix

FINALLY! NXE is off and running. As SpoonThrash has already posted, NXE is chalk full of new features including a new interface, a new Xbox Avatar system, and Netflix. I had a chance to play around with the Netflix option last night, and I must say: I am pleased.

Not being a Netflix subscriber, I found this to be the perfect opportunity to join. I signed up for the free 2 week subscription as soon as I installed the NXE. After a quick and easy setup, I was ready to go online to start browsing the titles they have available to stream straight to my Xbox. While Netflix offers more than 100,000 movie and television titles to choose from, only about 10% of those are available to stream.

After debating with my fiance about what to watch; Hanna Montana Season 1 or CSI: Las Vegas Season 9, We finally decided on CSI. After selecting the title on Netflix.com, the option was immediatly available on my Xbox. The option came with 6 expisodes to watch. We selected the first episode, which brought us to a screen that confirmed our internet connection. After determining our network speed, the episode started loading. It is worth noting that I have my Xbox hard wired into my modem. With that being said, I was shocked to find that my network connection was very low [2 bars filled out of 5]. It took about 3-4 min for the episode to load and start. The video quality was very low, with the picture being grainy and blurry. We decided to suck it up and just watch the episode like that. Throughout the show, I was a little unimpressed to find such bad quality, and a bit dissapointed that the network speed was so slow. I have pretty fast internet otherwise, as watching television programs on my laptop has been nothing but perfect. Is this the way it was always going to be?

Being the troopers we are, we finnished the episode. Deciding that one was not enough, we decided to watch another epidode. We selected the next one, and was supprised to find that the network connection was 4 out of 5 bars, and the epidode loaded in under a min (and as a confirmation of the recent NXE that SpoonRock posted, yes the episode was in HD!). A few seconds later our epidode started with the crispest picture I have ever seen in a streaming video. There were no more doubts in my mind that this wasn't the best thing ever. We watched 4 more episodes after that with only one minor stall in playback, which lasted all of 5 seconds (if that).

All in all, I am very pleased with the decision Microsoft made with teaming up with Netflix. It allows the system to be more than a gaming system, more of a focal point of your entertainment center.

RUMOR: After writing this post, SpoonRock has informed me that Sony has pulled all of their movies from Netflix-Xbox Access.........to which he says, and I quote: "[those] dicks!"

TubeSpoon - South Park and COD World at War

RandomSpoon - Nike NES Shoes

Forget the Air Jordans, I want my Nike NES Air Classic Sneakers! Now, those are some kicks.



Or how about these, the Nike NES Air Max Terra:



Check them out -

Nike Air Classic
Nike Air Max Terra

Thanks for breaking this story Kotaku!

GameSpoon - New Xbox Experience

It's finally here! The moment you've been dreading/waiting for! Well, I'm sure most of you are well aware of the significant user-interface changes for the Xbox 360, dubbed the "new xbox experience," so I'll save you the trouble of going into depths as to what some of these changes include. Here's an overview:

• Blades are gone...or are they? - They were actually moved to the Xbox Guide (the menu that pulls up when you click the "xbox" button).


• Avatars - Well, what can you really say about that? Time to make some messed up looking characters.


• Parties! BYOB - Party Chat is finally here, thank Christ. Up to 8 people can chat in one channel now...that means, your entire Halo 3 Big Team Battle team can communicate without having to touch the frickin' d-pad. Think of the glory! GLORY, DAMN IT, GLORY!! *fade to black*


• Play From Your Hard Drive - Finally, a solution to the problem of the EXTREMELY LOUD disc drive, that I love so much. I think mine has gotten worse...No more! You can download your games to you HDD. Not enough space? No worries, just delete the game you aren't playing! Also, load times will be quicker.


• Netflix - This is going to be sweet! Stream flicks, including HD (I believe); however, you need to have a Netflix subscriptiong w/unlimited streaming.


• and a ton more...

If you want to learn more, check out Xbox.com; sttraight from the source.

FlickSpoon - Star Trek (JJ Abrams)

The NCC-1701 Enterprise

GameSpoon - Zero Punctuation: Fable 2

I love Fable 2

TuneSpoon - Dir En Grey

How many bands do you know of that started out with a very pop-rock kind of sound, that successfully pulled off an extremely dark, heavy transition? I can think of one, Dir En Grey.

This band will rip your face off; plain and simple.

Who is Dir En Grey? Dir En Grey hails from Japan and is one of the few bands that have been fortunate enough to break through the language barrier and see success in English-speaking countries.

They have a very heavy, technical-guitar style. The vocals are extremely dynamic as is their music. They create familiar and unique sounds. Their composition is very thoughtful, meaning every moment they are clearly aware of what they are doing and are actively moving their songs a long; avoiding a simple repeativite chord structure as the basis for each section of their tracks.

Whether you understand Japanese or not, you will understand their music. However, it is not for the faint of heart; you'll need to have an appreciation for post-hardcore music to truely enjoy the experience that is Dir En Grey.

Japan has a very cool music scene with a wide range of styles available to those who are willing to seek out some new music.

Check out Dir En Grey on their Purevolume page or their Myspace page! Or just go randomly purchase their music. If you like post-hardcore, you'll dig these guys as much as I do. Now, back to some "clever sleazoid."

Dir En Grey at Purevolume.com

Dir En Grey at Myspace.com

Dir En Grey's Official Website (English)

GameSpoon - Xbox 360 Avatars

Check out this video about creating avatars with the New Xbox Experience that we'll all be "invited" to use beginning November 19th (lovely use of language).



"for me, I've always wanted to have a faux-hawk. So I'm going to start here, with this douche-bag" ha! That's awesome. Personally, I liked the "warrior john mccain" with creepy teeth avatar; priceless.

I'm looking forward to the NXE, hopefully it'll go through without any glitches...god help me if for some reason I lose my saved data...my FABLE 2 saved data. Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorn.

Gamespoon - Johnny Chung Lee; The future of gaming?

SpoonPops turned me on to this a while back now. How many times have you played games like Halo 3, where your character is hiding behind a wall and you are physically trying to look around the corner? Well, I know this has happened to me, and this has clearly happened to Johnny Chung Lee. Only I can't do crap about it, because I don't know crap about programming. Well guess who does? That's right, Johnny Chung Lee.




And now if you hadn't had enough, and looking for something a little bit more futuristic, watch this:



"Now, if your fingers are anything like mine, they don't emit very much infra-red light; they're made of skin!". Ah Johnny, a programmer and a master of anatomy.

So, if you know anything about electronics, get yo-self over to Radio Shack and spend yo-self $20 and make one....... and invite me over to play with it.

TuneSpoon - Zach Kim

Guitar + Piano = Zach Kim. SpoonRock's last post about the guy playing the Mega Man 2 theme lead me back to these videos. While this isn't the most practical form of guitar, it sure is great. Here are a few of my favorite video game themes:


The Legend of Zelda


Tetris Theme


Super Mario Brothers

Wait, is that the guy from Dragonforce?!?

GameSpoon - Zero Punctuation: Dead Space

Dead Space...Event Horizon's video game? Awesome.

GameSpoon - Mega Man 2

After spending a portion of my Saturday evening, in an epic battle playing Ice Hockey on a top-loading NES against SpoonThrash, I was inspired. So inspired that I decided to fire up the ol' Nintendo Wii to browse through the Virtual Console NES titles. What did I find? Mega Man 2 of course! I loved, no, I love the Mega Man series. I've forgotten how great (and difficult) old Nintendo platforming can really be.

Mega Man 2 was originally released in North America in July of 1989 and I think it is safe to say that I haven't played that game since 1991 - give or take a few years. What surprised me about playing the VC version, is that I actually recognized a few of the boards! For someone with as bad of a memory as I have, that's pretty remarkable. It just goes to show how much time I must have invested in the Mega Man series when I was young. For those of you who also love(d) the series, I highly recommend throwing down the 500 points, you won't regret it.

Check this video out! Remember how EPIC the Mega Man 2 music is? Awesome.



Okay, okay, I have to add this video too. I think SpoonThrash and I will start a "mega man series" cover band, we'll get SpoonRavis to jump in there with a wicked saxophone solo too:

TuneSpoon - Silverchair: Emotion Sickness

Silverchair happens to be the band that caused me to go out and pick up my first guitar; it's been one hell of a road since that time. The last time I was fortunate enough to see them play, during the Young Modern tour, they played "Emotion Sickness" just like this video and it changed my life, again.

"Emotion Sickness" was the first song I ever learned to play on guitar and there will always be a special place for this song in my heart. To have witnessed this rendition of the song was quite remarkable. This band changed my life, will it change yours? Pay attention to the dynamic, melodic, harmonic content of this song.

Enjoy

HistorySpoon - President Obama

Like SpoonRavis, all of us at The Spoon are celebrating. Here's another great photo of our next President!



Thank God.

Here is Sen. Obama's "Yes We Can" speech from Grant Park in Chicago, Il. These are the words of a determined and inspiring man. Sen. Obama is clearly serious about everything he stands for and everything that America stands for, change is on the horizon for America and the entire world. It is time for a new era, a new generation to take charge and lead our country into the future.

HistorySpoon - President Barack Obama

This is it. Our generations moment in history.

"Change has come to America."

JapanSpoon - Nintendo DSi

because, who doesn't love Japanese TV?