Holiday Xbox 360 dashboard update offers social achievements, Bing search

By Mike Flacy September 9, 2011

xbox-dashboard — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Unofficially leaked by a YouTube user last month, Microsoft officially released information about the next planned update to the Xbox 360 dashboard earlier this week. One large change to the dashboard includes a higher level of integration with social networks. Using the new Social tab within the interface, users will be able to set a “beacon” to alert friends on Facebook about playing a specific game. This “beacon” also acts as a game invitation that doesn’t have an expiration date. In addition, users will be able to brag about specific achievements over Facebook, but only if the user specifies the action. Users can also set the updates to fire out constantly as achievements are earning while playing a game, but those Facebook updates may be marked as spam by friends if the frequency is out of control.

Kinect integration has also been expanded and gesture controls are more widespread across the entire interface. Similar to how a user would control actions on an iPad, swiping gestures move the menus. Speech recognition also works with the Kinect system and users can directly travel to tabs within the interface by stating “Xbox: Tab Name”. Also tied into the speech recognition, users will be able to search for content on the system by stating “Bing: Content Name”. For instance, saying ‘Bing: Gears of War” would bring up all content related to the popular shooter series from Epic Games. However, the search function is restricted to content available on Xbox Live.

Building on the success of adding ESPN programming to the console, Microsoft is in discussions with many cable providers in helping turn the Xbox 360 into a potential replacement for the set-top box. Company officials didn’t have any new partnerships to announced, but are hoping for greater live TV integration before the launch of the Fall update. A beta version of the interface is launching next month to select users and all users can expect to see a complete roll-out of the new dashboard by the end of 2011.

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Computing

Best GPU deals: MSI, XFX, EVGA

An AMD graphics card in an external GPU enclosure.

Getting into gaming can be an expensive hobby, especially if you're building a new PC from scratch and want to get the best GPU that you possibly can. Unfortunately, in the past couple of years, GPU prices have skyrocketed, especially for RTX 40-series cards, and they don't look to be coming down any time soon, whether you're going for AMD or Nvidia. Luckily, there are still quite a lot of great deals you can take advantage of that will let you snag a card for a great price, and we've collected some of our favorites below. If you're building your own PC from scratch, check out SSD deals and RAM deals as well. That said, if you'd rather go for something that's already been put together, check out these gaming PC deals instead.
XFX SPEEDSTER SWFT210 AMD Radeon RX 6600 Core 8GB GDDR6 -- $230, was $280

XFX is a pretty well-known brand that makes AMD Radeon GPUs, so you're getting a good-quality device right out of the gate. It has an impressive 8GB GDDR6, at least for this price bracket, and will give you a bit longer life out of it when games start using up a lot more VRAM, even at lower graphical settings. While the base clock runs at 2.0 GHz, the boosted clock speed is 2.5 GHz which is pretty good, and the whole thing is unlocked, so you could theoretically boost it higher if you have the right cooling. This RTX 6600 can support resolutions up to 8K, but really, this is an ideal 1080p gaming GPU.

Gaming

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Someone playing Wordle on a smartphone.

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Yesterday's Wordle answer
Let's start by first reminding ourselves of yesterday's Wordle answer for those new to the game or who don't play it daily, which was "PIOUS." So we can say that the Wordle answer today definitely isn't that. Now, with that in mind, perhaps take another stab at it using one of these Wordle starting words and circle back if you have no luck.
Hints for today's Wordle
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Today’s Wordle starts with the letter J.
Today’s Wordle uses the letter K.
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Gaming

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