It doesn’t add up

One of the Spaces features I’ve worked on a lot over the last 3 years is the Profile module.  Anyone in the software business will tell you that for every feature request made by a customer, the product team has a mile-long list of issues that drive us nuts about our features and it kills us when we have to continually postpone them to a future release in favor of improving other higher-priority areas of the service.

I turned 31 today and ran smack dab into one of those nagging issues I want to fix and one that Spaces loyalists inside & outside of Microsoft have contacted me about regularly — having to update the age in your profile every year.  We’ve got Xbox Live modules that automagically update when you pop a new game into the Xbox 360 in your living room, but your Profile module at birthday time acts more like the Neanderthal clocks in your house when Spring-ing ahead or Fall-ing back!

It may seem like a simple math problem, but there are some minor design challenges with the Age field being part of the General section of your profile while your birthday is part of your Personal Contact Info.  Nothing insurmountable, though. 

While I can’t make any promises about when we’ll be able to fix this, it just became my #1 birthday wish if Ben, German, and DeEtte are listening right now 🙂