I think I'll begin an occasional series. Consider this installment the second after my post from earlier this year, "First They Won't Let Us Browse the Stacks; Then They'll Turn Us Into Batteries and Throw Us Into the Matrix."

I've got a new blog. Well, technically, I don't... my Xbox does. Yeah. Really.

Well, kinda.

The folks over at 360voice.com allow folks to submit gamer tags and then narrative voice is given to the Xbox 360 owner's latest activity (assuming there is an Xbox Live account). The perspective of the narrative is from the Xbox itself which is very intriguing, if not a bit cheesy at times. In fact, he (my Xbox) tends to whine a bit on the days I don't play anything. There's even a place for comments.

And evidently, besides all this existing as a very interesting, but unusual gimmick, there's a bit of cutting edge computer AI stuff associated here. From the About page at 360voice.com:

How did you come up with the idea for your site?

As a member of the Xbox Community Developer Program, Steve had access to the live gamer feeds and was playing around with the data. I attended the O'Reily Emerging Technologies conference where I heard Bruce Sterling give a keynote about blogjects (a term coined by Julian Bleecker)... futuristic objects that write "blogs" about their interactions with the world and other devices just like humans write about their interactions with the world and other people. In discussing this keynote with Steve, it didn't take long for us to see how this academic concept could relate to the Xbox 360, albeit in a much more scaled back fashion. We got quick prototype of the idea up and running in a few days. The response from the prototype was so huge that we immediately developed it into a full blown product which became 360voice.com.

So, yes it's all very weird, but somehow still I have to go look and see what my Xbox has written for the day--even after days when I've played nothing.

By the way, my Xbox will refer to me in his posts under my gamertag name, Borofaxx. I got that name from the cream of the same name that my mom used to put on my cuts and scrapes when I got hurt as a child (and she put it on diaper rash when I was an infant, but that's probably more than you want to know). I'm pretty sure it's no longer being produced (we all have Neosporiin now!), so I thought the name would make a good and unusual gamertag. And of course I added the extra X at the end because that makes any word or name cooler.

One last thing. Sometime my Xbox is...frankly.. a liar. No, I don't mean about my gamer score. Take for instance the statement he attributed to me on October 5. It's simply not true. I have chosen not to use that particular word.

Feel free to check it out (and even leave a comment) if you want at http://www.360voice.com/tag/Borofaxx.

Tags: Xbox