Dashboard themes, we hardly knew ya *update*
Currently, Xbox Live doesn’t actually show you how your dashboard will look after installing a new theme, which can leave you with a bad purchase and 150 MS points poorer. Matt Brett and Andrew McTeer were hoping to offer a pretty useful service for Xbox Live users, but a few hours after they put it up, their baby went down with a rather big bang.
The two had made a site called Dashboard Themes, which lets people surfing the site preview the Xbox 360 theme downloads before they purchase them. An unexpected turn of events killed the site, however, which we can call the Digg Effect. Apparently, so many people visited the site as a result of getting word of it from Digg and news sites that the server went down.
As Matt Brett writes on the comments page for the Dashboard Themes digg,
Actually, my site is hosted with A Small Orange who have for the most part kept me online tonight. Dashboard Themes itself is getting killed, though. We’ll definitely have to do something about our current server setup considering my site is taking the brunt of the load.
Till it comes back up, you may want to bookmark the website or send these guys a donation to pay for more bandwidth. We hope they get their site back up soon, because it really does sound very useful.
Update: Great news! The site went back up just recently, so you can actually enjoy Matt and Andrew’s work without a hitch.
As you can see from the above picture, they actually buy each and every theme and take actual screen captures of it for people. It’s also relatively up-to-date, and actually shows you how the theme will look on your dashboard rather than just showing you a bunch of pictures.
Since they’re mostly paying for this out of their own pockets and augmenting it with ads, if you’ve got the time, send them some support (a donation perhaps?) to keep the site up and maintain bandwidth. For now, we’ll be changing the source link to reach their about page so you can read up on the hows and whys of the Dashboard Themes website.
Currently, Xbox Live doesn’t actually show you how your dashboard will look after installing a new theme, which can leave you with a bad purchase and 150 MS points poorer. Matt Brett and Andrew McTeer were hoping to offer a pretty useful service for Xbox Live users, but a few hours after they put it up, their baby went down with a rather big bang.
The two had made a site called Dashboard Themes, which lets people surfing the site preview the Xbox 360 theme downloads before they purchase them. An unexpected turn of events killed the site, however, which we can call the Digg Effect. Apparently, so many people visited the site as a result of getting word of it from Digg and news sites that the server went down.
As Matt Brett writes on the comments page for the Dashboard Themes digg,
Actually, my site is hosted with A Small Orange who have for the most part kept me online tonight. Dashboard Themes itself is getting killed, though. We’ll definitely have to do something about our current server setup considering my site is taking the brunt of the load.
Till it comes back up, you may want to bookmark the website or send these guys a donation to pay for more bandwidth. We hope they get their site back up soon, because it really does sound very useful.
Update: Great news! The site went back up just recently, so you can actually enjoy Matt and Andrew’s work without a hitch.
As you can see from the above picture, they actually buy each and every theme and take actual screen captures of it for people. It’s also relatively up-to-date, and actually shows you how the theme will look on your dashboard rather than just showing you a bunch of pictures.
Since they’re mostly paying for this out of their own pockets and augmenting it with ads, if you’ve got the time, send them some support (a donation perhaps?) to keep the site up and maintain bandwidth. For now, we’ll be changing the source link to reach their about page so you can read up on the hows and whys of the Dashboard Themes website.
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