Microsoft has been very busy of late adding cool new functionality to the Xbox 360. Hot on the heels of the recent Sky Player update comes a whole new host of social media, music and video features for the console.

The latest update gives users with an Xbox Live Gold Membership access to Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm, as well as Zune on demand videos and movies.

As far as I know, this makes the Xbox 360 unique amongst gaming consoles, with a breadth of features not seen on any other machine. So, let's dive in and discover the cool and not so cool points about the new update. The devil is, as always with software, in the detail..

Santa got me an Xbox 360 last Christmas and I love it, it's a great piece of kit. I have it hooked up to the main TV in the living room and networked to a Vista Media Center PC. It gets a lot of use for TV, music, photos and gaming. However, nothing's perfect, so here's my Xbox 360 features wishlist:

1: Gapless playback of music when used as an extender. This is a major annoyance. I have loads of CDs ripped on my Vista PC and use the Xbox as an extender to listen to them. I was surprised to find that the Xbox 360 has no gapless playback support, especially when it's promoted as a media extender. Try listening to Jean Michel Jarre or Pink Floyd with gaps between tracks..

2: Volume control when used as an extender. Again, like gapless playback, an extender 'what the' moment. When streaming music or TV from a Media Center PC there is no way of directly changing the audio output volume of the Xbox. By design apparently. You have to change the volume on your TV or hi-fi or whatever you have it hooked up to. Mad.