I’ll be in Seattle from Feb. 15th – Feb. 20th
Feb 1st
I will be in Seattle from Feb 15th to Feb 20th, 2010 for what is probably my last Microsoft MVP Summit. I plan to visit Whidbey Island one day during this week. I will probably rent a car and head over to the ferry. I live in Oak Harbor (on Whidbey Island) for 2 years back in the early 90s and want to revisit this time around.
If anyone wants to get together on any of these evenings, let me know. I am not 100% sure what the schedule looks like at night, but I am sure we can work something out. I will have most of Monday available and possibly a good portion of Tuesday.
Looking forward to saying goodbye to a bunch of old friends. It should be a blast. Tyler, you better show up somewhere too.
Merry Christmas from Chris… My humble Gift = Google Wave Invites.
Dec 24th
I have 20 more Google Wave invites to dish out. The 1st 20 to comment here that they want one get them. I will not get around to sending them out until tomorrow though. Once I send the invite, it can take a couple days for the invitation from Google to arrive.
Merry Christmas Folks!
What’s up with Chris on Twitter?
Dec 18th
A couple of days ago I decided to abandon @ChrisLeckness and start over with “protected tweets”. I was going to seperate friends, followers, and asshats this way. It went well but there are a couple problems…
- By protecting your tweets, others can’t see what you tweet. That is the point right? Right. BUT, what about when you want to say something to someone that isn’t following you. You can @theirname all you want, but they aren’t going to see it. I had thought that they would as long as they were @’ed, but I was wrong. I did a test with a couple people on my new account yesterday and no luck. I am not going to be able to protect my tweets. Being able to have conversation with others that do not follow me is important.
- I also realized yesterday how many accounts and how many services I will have to log in and chance stuff on to reflect the new account. I had not thought about that.
That said, I have to go unprotected and I am going to return to my original account. No, I don’t mind losing 3500 tweets and almost 800 followers. In fact, I removed 250-300 followers one by one before I said screw it, this is taking too long. I wasted almost 2 hours removing about 200 of the followers. It’s ridiculous… I have decided to just leave those that are left in place. I unfollowed everyone I followed on that account when I moved to the new account too. I will refollow the same folks I followed on my new account. My new outlook on Twitter will remain the same too.
My NEW Twitter Policy
Dec 17th
Taking a page from Ike, I decided to make myself a Twitter Policy. I just abandoned my 3500 tweets and 700 followers on my old account and started a brand new Twitter account to move forward with my new plan on how I am going to use Twitter.
I plan to continue to use the @Mobilitysite Account to share our stories and contests on a non-personal level.
With my new account, I am only following a select few people. These people are local friends and family, personal online friends, the celebs that are real that I care to hear, and colleagues that I have become friends with. Don’t be offended if I don’t follow you back. It’s not personal. I am just separating things to make my life easier online. Many of the people I used to follow are now part of my private list (~200), but I have no need to follow many of them on a personal level.
2 new innovations with Twitter have made it where I can pull off this plan without affecting others.
- With the lists, I can follow these people selectively without having to actually follow them. This allows me to separate personal and business (or in my case, hobby). I can choose to not read the list on a particular day.
- With the part where followers won’t see tweets that start with @_____ unless they also follow that account, the static for my followers will be reduced since they won’t see many of my tweets.
As for my followers, if you send me an @reply, I will probably answer no problem. I just might not follow back. It’s not that I don’t care about the individual, it’s just that I need to tone down the noise.
If want to follow me, my username is now @Leckness. My tweets are private. Don’t be afraid to request to follow me. I will most likely approve the request.
- I won’t approve you if you have a 1/2 naked avatar.
- I probably won’t approve you if you have about the same amount of followers and you are following and those numbers are 1K+
- I probably won’t approve you if you have 5K+ Followers.
Twitter can be fun. I enjoy it now too. I used to hate Twitter.
Dude Tweets his Marraige in Real Time
Dec 10th
OMG. I love this. It’s classic, kind of goofy and untraditional, but classic. Props! The Minister announces him and his new bride as man and wife and he pops out the iPhones. Hands one to his new bride and they start updating Facebook and Twitter. After they get done with the updates, the kiss.
I surprised not only my guests, but also Tracy by pulling out my phone and posting on Facebook and Twitter from the altar during out wedding. I had her phone ready in my pocket, so when she asked for it I could hand it to her. No one knew about this except the minister, and myself.
Here is a link to the actual tweet.
Source: TechCrunch
Altering Windows Live Writer Themes
Dec 6th
I just put a new “Magazine Style” theme on Mobilitysite.com this weekend. When I refreshed the style properties for the blog in Windows Live Writer, the excerpt list of the most recent articles took over as the layout for Windows Live Writer. What this did was make the theme look really skinny. The WYSIWYG aspect of Windows Live Writer is rendered useless with this layout. The frontpage only shows a 335px wide excerpt of the 10 most recent posts (above left). When you actually read the article though, you have a spacious 610px to work with (above right). The problem is that the 335px view that is present in WLW now makes formatting the post guesswork. There has to be a way to fix this. Here’s how I did it.
CES 2010 is calling…
Dec 2nd
Dammit, each day that comes brings stronger urges to go ahead and head to Las Vegas for CES. For each of the last 3 years, I have planned NOT TO GO and end up going last minute. Is this year going to be the same? I doubt it. If Alabama beats Florida in the SEC Championship game Saturday, there is no chance I will be at CES 2010. I have a coworker that is senior to me that will take that time frame off to head over to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl if Alabama makes it the the BCS National Championship game. That will make it impossible to get off for CES.
I have to admit, I have already looked up rates on flights. 
My cousin Bo just emailed me to see if I was going to be there. He is and wanted to meet up for some nightlife. I am just going to send him a link to this post in a minute. In addition to all the event and meeting requests I have already received (Digital Focus, Showstoppers, etc) and Bo’s email, I just got this one in.
Someone wants me in Vegas on Jan 7th…Damn!
If you think you’ve cancelled an Xbox Live Account, Double Check…
Nov 18th
I haven’t had a rant in a while, so here goes…
Since I purchased an iPhone 3GS on the day of the Windows Mobile 6.5 launch, I used my Zune(s) much. It’s been over a month now and I am ready to move on. This morning I went online to cancel my Zune Pass subscription that I have been using since January 2007 and I discover that I am still paying for Xbox Live Gold.
Why is this a big deal? I got rid of my Xbox 360 in June 2007. I cancelled the account on the phone a month or two after that. Then, about a year ago, I found out that I was still paying for it and called in to have it cancelled again. This time I was assured that it would be removed. I trust too much I guess. I don’t check my bills often and since I happily paid for Zune pass for almost 3 years, no red flags popped up for me when we saw a charge for Microsoft hit the account.
So, in closing, take the time to make sure that it’s canceled before moving on with life. Now I have to get on the phone again to waste another 30 minutes just to get Xbox Live removed again and hope that they will cancel my Zune Pass at the same time.
Am I doing it right? (Twitter)
Nov 15th
I have had a couple friends stop following me on Twitter in the last month or so. These aren’t just “Twitter” friends, these are actual friends in the industry. The 1st one said I tweeted too much and another said I was too self promotional. I wasn’t going to argue with the ones I asked, but these two left me wondering…
Do I Tweet too much? Am I too self promotional on Twitter?
I say no, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am too blind to see the problem. You know, the way some parents tell their daugthers how good they sing when their family dog keeps a better tune.
According to Tweetstats.com, I post about 11.6 tweets a day. Is that bad? According to the same source, 12% of my tweets are retweets. I RT my own sites often, but I also retweet friends just about as much.
So, am I doing it right. 
Brett’s ITA State Tournament Video
Nov 15th
Brett was in the 2009 ITA State Tournament yesterday. He is a red belt and he competed against 2 other red belts and 3 senior red belts yesterday. He finished 3rd of 6 in form and he finished 1st of 6 in sparring. He won 5-3, 5-0. 5-1 and had to face his friend Harrison for the gold. Here’s a little video I threw together from the footage. Congrats Brett. We are so proud of you.
Brett at the 2009 ITA State Tournament from Chris Leckness on Vimeo.
