1. Tweak your Windows Live home at http://home.live.com

This is your home base on Windows Live.   Home shows you everything happening in your network, and it’s your starting point for Windows Live activities on the web.

After you look around for a bit, add a few of your favorite photos to your home page.  These photos are just for you to see, so add photos of your favorite places or people.  If you add more than 4, you’ll slowly cycle through them.

Add some news headlines!  Click on Add or remove headlines in the right column to add a few of your favorite news sources.  Tweak your layout by clicking on Options and then Customize this page.  I’ve moved MSN below my news headlines, and I’ve increased the number of What’s new entries that I’ll see in my feed from 10 to 25.

2.  Check yourself out

Now that you’ve customized your home page, it’s time to see how you look to the world.  You can click on the Profile link in the header or navigate directly to http://profile.live.com.

First, pick a theme for yourself by clicking on the Options menu.  Click the More link to see some fantastic dynamic themes.  These dynamic themes change with the time of day and weather, and they range from gorgeous to hilarious.

Now, add a picture and fill in your profile details.  Fill out as much information as you like, and of course, you choose who gets to see the information.  I share everything but my contact info with everyone, but many people choose to only share information with their friends and family.

3. Add some web activities

One of the best ways to quickly make yourself looking really cool on Windows Live is to add your favorite web activities from around the web.  You bring your web content with you to Windows Live—whether it’s from Twitter, Flickr, your own custom blog, or many other places.

Adding web activities is easy, and you get to choose who sees those activities.  If you want the whole world to read your blog, but only your friends to read see your Twitter updates, no problem!

4. Browse away

If you already have a lot of friends on Windows Live, start with one of their profiles and go crazy.  If not, check mine out.  Browse around the friends in my network if you want to see some of the folks who built Windows Live, along with the rest of my friends and family.

5. Add some Favorite things

While you’re browsing, be on the lookout for Favorite things.  If you see something you like, click on the heart icon to add it to your own favorites list!

6. Build your network

Any time you see a friend on Windows Live, you should add that friend to your network.  Just click on his/her photo to send an invitation to appear on your profile and/or in your Messenger list.

7. Create a group

Click on the More link in the header to find your Groups page in Windows Live.  This is where you go to see what’s happening in your groups or create a new one.  If you have a group of you’re own that needs to collaborate—like a band, a sports team, or a family—just create a group, invite the members you need, and start sharing messages.  You can share a calendar, photos, discussions, or any types of files you need to.

8. Share some files

Head on over to SkyDrive to share files or photos with your friends or the world.  SkyDrive is great if you need to share files between computers or with others in a hurry.  You can upload up to 25GB of data, absolutely free.  I use it to share song ideas and recordings with the rest of my band!

9. Start talking

Once you’ve found someone you want to talk to on Windows Live, you have plenty of options for getting in touch with him/her.  You can:

Send a private message.  If you want to send a quick note without exchanging email addresses, just send a private message.

Post a note on his/her profile.  If you want to send a public message that many people can see (like a Wall), leave a note on your friend’s profile.

Send an email with Hotmail.  Hotmail’s still around, and it’s faster and prettier than ever.  If you haven’t used it, give it a try.

Send an email with the Mail client.  You can use the Mail desktop client to send mail with hotmail or any other web mail service that supports standard mail protocols.

Send an instant message with Messenger.  Messenger is one of the largest instant messaging networks in the world, and it’s a great way to keep in touch in real time.

Windows Live Mail

10. Post a blog with Windows Live Writer

First things first, if you haven’t yet downloaded the client suite, pick it up at http://download.live.com.  You can choose to install only the applications that you want to install.

Once you’ve installed Writer, go ahead and start it up!   It will ask you to tell you where your current blog lives or you can create a new one in Windows Live.  Live Writer works great with most of the biggest blog services on the planet—including WordPress, Blogger, Spaces, etc.

Writer isn’t just a notepad or word processing app that can publish to the web.  It’s designed from the ground up to create beautiful, rich blog entries, and it isn’t bogged down with fancy print options.  Writer pulls in the fonts, layout, and theme of your blog so that what you see in Writer is exactly what will show up on the web.

I could go on and on about how convenient and powerful Writer is for posting Blog entries and about all of its great web-centric features, but you really should just see it for yourself.  If you’re a diehard web blogger, you’d be crazy not to give it a try.

And of course, it’s absolutely free.

Sticking to the Olympics theme, let's talk about Vancouver '10.  Events will be split between Vancouver and its surrounding mountains and Whistler which I've blogged about before.   I haven't been to Whistler for a few years, but hopefully I'll make a trip up this year before the insane Olympics rush in 2010.

The games themselves will be held from February 12-28, 2010.  Opening and closing ceremonies will be held in Vancouver at the BC Place Stadium.  The ticket process begins with a lottery system for Canadian residents in early October.  Tickets will be available for US citizens through CoSport, but it's not clear yet what date they'll go on sale or what distribution scheme will be used.

Here are the events I'll try to get tickets for in order of interest.  I'll probably tweak this list after I hear from folks who have actually attended some of these events before.

1. US ice hockey
2. Other ice hockey
3. Speed skating
4. Snowboarding+
5. Curling++
6. Ski jumping*+
7. Bobsleigh*+
8. Luge*+

*Events at Whistler are lower on the list only because they're tougher to get to for me.  I plan to beg and plead with my wonder cousin Jesse to let Jamie and me crash on their couch or floor for a night or two outside of Vancouver.

+Brrr...

++Why not?

Anyone else going?  What events are you thinking of?  Has anyone attended mountain events as a spectator before?  Is it worth it, or is it just cold?

Everyone seems to be watching the Olympics this year.  I've heard the following from about half a dozen people: "I don't usually pay attention to the Olympics, but this year I'm really into it".  A number of factors probably affect this:

1. Interest in China hosting the Olympics in general
2. China's stunning execution--from the opening ceremony to the arenas to their dominant athletes
3. NBC's expansive coverage
4. Seemingly greater focus of the news media at large compared to years past
5. Some dumb luck that there's been a critical mass of followers in my social circle
6. A more interesting set of events in prime time

So what makes a good Olympic sport?  I think it's some balance of the following:

1. The sport needs to have enough international following that one team won't dominate it forever.
2. The sport needs to be interesting to people who don't follow the sport.
3. Rules of the sport should be simple enough for casual viewers to understand, even if they couldn't judge or referee it.
4. It must be possible to reach a conclusion about the greatest participant during the span of the Olympics

What's in?  Beach volleyball, trampoline

Beach volleyball: The best team in the world is likely to win, but games are competitive and interesting, and the game is approachable (even if casual viewers seem offended by let serves).  It doesn't feel traditional, but it's here to stay.

Trampoline:  Who knew that trampoline was an Olympic sport?  Make fun of the athletes as gymnast rejects if want, but the sport is no more ridiculous than gymnastics at large, and it fits the criteria.

What's out?  BMX, baseball, softball, weight lifting

BMX: once one rider falls, several more are likely to follow, regardless of how skillful they are--there's too much luck involved

Baseball, softball:  Major League baseball series are 5 to 7 games long because the variance in single game results means that the best teams won't rise to the top often enough.  The Olympics are too short to allow for this.

Weight lifting:  No one wants to see it.  At least no one in Seattle.

Putting my small Twitter obsession aside for a moment, it's time to kick the dust off my old blog and pimp a few friends' products.

1.  Verdiem Edison

Edison is a tool for managing power management settings on PCs.  Edison's more friendly and intuitive than Windows power management settings, and it gives XP users more flexibility.  I think the sweet spot is the union of:

1. Regular users (not uber-geeks)
2. XP users
3. Desktop PC users

Uber-geeks probably don't want one more utility running on their boxes.  Vista's power management is more useful out of the box than XP's, so value proposition is smaller for Vista users.  Most laptops have reasonable power settings out of the box.

Edison is probably most useful for small business who normally leave XP PCs running 24x7 when they're used exclusively during business hours.  It's gotten a good run of press, and support through Microsoft and MSN.  Here's a glowing article about the software in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/technology/06green.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

2.  Whrrl's Been Here? Facebook app

Whrrl is a Seattle startup building a location-oriented social network.  They're built around a mobile app for updating status and finding friends on GPS phones (including the iPhone of course).

My phone has no GPS, so I don't use the Whrrl network yet, but I've been playing with their new Facebook app.  Users navigate a map of interest points, noting which points they like or don't like.  The whole point is to see what your friends like and dislike, of course.  I'm a sucker for interesting local tools and scoring meaningless points, so I've killed my share of time with it:

Here's a longer video I took during Obama's speech.