Posted from Major Nelson of Xbox Live: You may have noticed that the LIVE service has been having a few issues over the past few days. This includes things like signing in, matchmaking and account recovery. Not everyone has had problems, but I know some of you have and I wanted to give you and update. While the service was never completely offline, problems like this are not acceptable. The entire LIVE team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great LIVE experience. While we’re not done yet, I wanted to let you know that things are getting better each hour and that no one on the team is going anywhere until the job is done. Thanks for your patience.

That was pretty much the state of things and reports over the holiday break. What a way to close out the year and can you imagine being a new member to Live as of Christmas, sure things have been rough, but for me its been great for the most part. So all I can say to new members, hang in there, they'll get it all fixed.

I've played more CoD4 lately and have only seen a few instances of problems getting into some matches, but I still had plenty of matches to choose from just the same. So I'm thankful and I've been following the constant updates from Major Nelson via Twitter and I'm happy with the work they are doing in trying to fix the situation.

Problems also seem to be effecting Zuner's as well and it appears the Zune Marketplace has had issues. Being a new Zuner myself, I haven't spent much time on the Marketplace and haven't noticed the issues in that area. Regardless of the location of the problems, I think Microsoft is working hard and values us as Customers and is doing everything possible to fix the issues as fast as possible.

I just found this site a few days ago and I just love the presentation and information it provides. I'm not sure the order of these sites, but for me, this is the third in a collection of new sites related to the Xbox 360 and the Community.

I'll start with the first site I came across and that was the 360FriendSpot.Com site. I heard about this after listening to Squidpunch on some podcasts and listing the top games being played. This led me on to site number two, the LiveEye site for tracking games played on the Xbox 360. All of these are free for you to participate in and the data tracked is only a total of live members signed up on these sites. So you Op-In if you like to be tracked and they don't spam you with stuff.

So lets bring it on home... number three comes in the shape of 360Voice.Com. This is a blog site for your Xbox, developed by Steve (fatty chubs) and Trapper (change agent). Now the first thing I thought was, not another blog site, I've already got myself into two sites, not to mention the various community boards. Hold it now... its not that kind of blog site. This is a blog for the 360. I know, I know... I already have one though. No... this one is your 360's blog and your 360 does all the blogging.

That's right a very clever site that presents the games you've played in a blog style format. All you have to do is support your Xbox 360 in it's efforts. What? Just play it and make it happy... the 360 will do its part and tell your friends about all of the wonderful adventures your having together in gaming.

Props to Squidpunch & ZaaM It for all the hard work that they've done with 360FriendSpot.Com & LiveEye and I have to also say the great work they've done in helping with Unscripted360.Com as well. Great job also to Steve & Trapper, I look forward to seeing what my Xbox has to say. So if you haven't seen these sites, get into the games and sign up and be counted.

Microsoft has recently released the ability for you to give Microsoft Points to your friends now, the only catch is you need to know their Windows Live ID to start this process.

I found this on the Unscripted360.Com site today and as a whim asked Deacon to test it by sending points to me. I was surprised with his response of sure, just make sure you spend 50 points on a little something. I was only joking.

That encouraged me to Pay It Forward and I picked a U360 friend and sent him a little gift then. The cool thing about the points, is not only can you use them on Xbox Live, but your can use them on the Zune Marketplace as well.

So if you know a Zuner or Xbox Live gamer, then here's another option for gift giving. Now you can't take points you already have and use them. You have to buy new points and send them in the amounts of 2000, 1000, or 500 points. So that's only $25.00, $12.50, or $6.25 and no shipping... Great! Kudos to Microsoft for setting this up and I only hope they can figure out away to allow us to enter a Gamertag down the road. Would be easier then asking everyone for their Live ID. So start your own Point Spread and give a little!

"Daddy you need to buy this game!" Do I need to even say more here... If my daughter was to review this game in just two words, it would be, "Buy This!" I downloaded the demo last night and she ate this game up. It was a quick little 3 boards for the demo that we worked through, but it gives you a clear taste of what the game is all about and we just tried the free play mode.

With my daughter learning to read & write now, I can't help but feel this game would help encourage a little more of this. The secret words will be a huge challenge for her and that is where Mom & Dad playing can help her out. In fact we helped each other, last night I was about to throw in the towel and my daughter comes back with, "If at first you don't succeed Daddy, try, try again!" and sure enough the word came to me.

I'm sure the full version of this game will be a blast and provide a lot of entertainment. If you haven't tried the demo, then I recommend you download it and give it a try for yourself. If your looking for a game that is great for young kids and fun for the whole family, then you can't go wrong with this and I really feel the word search can only help them learn. Seeing my daughter have this much fun, I think the 800 points is a very small price to pay for the amount of fun and entertainment value.

Update on Zun3: I got it! well I've had it for a week or so now to be precise. Had some issues with the first one and thankfully a phone call to Woot!, settled things finally and a new one was shipped out.

I'm getting use to things with the new software and learning more about the video features. I'm looking to try and encode some movies to play and will write back on my success or failures in that area.

Funny thing about the Zune.Com site, for some reason you can post the word Zune in your page areas, at least I've run into trouble doing so, that's why I've started using Hacker slang, so to speak, and writing it with the number 3. No, I'm not just trying to be cool here.

I hadn't really thought about getting a player like this, so it was a pleasant surprise gift from my wife. Oh, your able to name your Zun3 and if you have wireless on, you can share songs between people. I haven't tried this just yet, but I'm using my Gamertag for the name of my Zun3. If your in the Texas area, just look for me now, LOL!.

I need to look at connecting my PC to the 360 next and try streaming some music soon. I guess I can at least do that for some of the arcade games perhaps. Not sure how much music I'd like to play during a session of Call of Duty 4 now.

All in all, Microsoft has got a good thing going with the Zun3 and I haven't even attempted to use all of the features available really. I might need to splurge and try out a monthly subscription and see how many songs I can find to try out soon.

I love the 30GB version and the price of $99 was a steal I think. You can also check out the newly released 80GB models if you like, I'll be fine with the space I have for now.

With three flavors to select from, I just might get my wish someday. It's about a year now since I first heard about this type of game and listen closely now, to what I'm about to say here. Are you ready? It was from a buddy of mine and on the PS2 Platform of all things. :) He's rolling his eyes about now too. So he tells me about this cool game where you hold a controller shaped guitar and rock out to songs. He's even seen an 80 year old Grandma rock out.

What?

Pretty sure that is the expression most people get when they hear this for the first time. I told him, I don't get it and can't see it being that cool. So he brought over the PS2... Calm down... and yes I let it into my home.... and I had a blast rocking the night away. So I was glad to hear that a version was set to hit the Xbox 360 and felt I'd have to consider trying the game out on the platform I love so much.

Right about the time Guitar Hero II had launched for the Xbox 360, with the exclusive Gibson Explorer Guitar, news was starting to come out about another game called Rockband. Then after the release of Guitar Hero II, news was leaked that versions were on the way for the Wii and that Guitar Hero III would be out in the fall for all platforms. Great news and I decided I could hold off on picking up GHII and watch for GHIII to come out.

Then more information came out about Rockband and how cool the setup would be and that they had worked real hard on the drums for this game. Excellent, I've always wanted to be a drummer, now to the present... I got to see the Rockband in action recently and I'm sold now, I'd love to play the drums and can see having a blast with the family & friends with this game. I'd even think about trying to sing, the game looks that good.

I'm even looking at my options to pick up used versions of GHII & GHIII. I know I'd like to have the Gibson Explorer, the Gibson Les Paul (wireless) and round it all out with the Fender Strat from Rockband. Sounds like I'm becoming a Guitar Game Collector now, to bad we can't play all three guitars at the same time. Someone could always air Guitar along I guess.

In closing, I borrowed a friends GHII for a family vacation and got my brother-in-law hooked. He's now got a version for the PC. That's right, these things are everywhere and on every platform. So if you ever wanted to rock, just select your weapon and platform and do it!