From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Larry Hryb
Larry Hryb's press shot
Other names	Major Nelson
Occupation	Director of Programming for Xbox Live
Known for	Host of "Major Nelson Radio" podcast
Website http://www.majornelson.com/

Larry Hryb (pronounced /ˈhɜrb/ "Herb"), also known by his Xbox Live gamertag Major Nelson, is the Director of Programming for the Microsoft gaming network Xbox Live. His blog "Xbox Live's Major Nelson" provides an "inside" look at operations at Microsoft's Xbox division. He picked the gamertag Major Nelson after a character by the same name on the 1960s U.S. television comedy I Dream of Jeannie after it was recommended to him by his TiVo.^[1] Prior to taking the position at Microsoft in 2004, he was a former programmer and on air host with radio broadcaster Clear Channel Communications.^[2] Hryb graduated from Syracuse University in 1989 with a degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Professional

Larry Hryb worked for Clear Channel Communications in Hartford, CT prior to Microsoft. Larry joined the Xbox team in early 2004 as the Xbox LIVE Director Of Programming. Hryb has been instrumental in the development in the Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE and the 'New Xbox Experience'. He was also one of the small team of people at Xbox who came up with the concept of 'Xbox 360 Achievements' a popular feature of Xbox 360 games. In addition, Mr. Hryb has done much forward thinking community word, and has advised numerous gaming and non-gaming companies on how to best manage their communities and social network. He can be reached via email at Major- at - Xbox dot com.

Podcast

Hryb is most known for his popular weekly podcast "Major Nelson Radio". Direct from inside the Microsoft Xbox team, Hryb and regular co-host Eric Neustadter (known as "e") discuss Xbox, Xbox Live, Xbox 360, gaming, technology, other next generation consoles (including the PlayStation 3, and Wii), among other subjects. Hryb also frequently invites colleagues at Microsoft to participate in the show, including Laura Massey (Gamertag "lollip0p") and Stephen Toulouse ("Stepto"). His show regularly hosts interviews with people in the gaming community, and offers prizes to listeners through his "Name the Game" contest, where he plays a short audio clip from a game, and a winner is drawn from the correct entries. Additionally, regular features of the podcast include "Xbox 101", a segment devoted to various features on the Xbox 360 or Xbox Live, and the after show, an easter egg where Hryb talks about random topics. Major Nelson and e regularly joke about each other's Gamerscore and gaming habits. Xbox 101 is also a series of "Inside Xbox" videos on Xbox Live.^{[citation needed]}

On November 6, 2006, he celebrated his '200th' podcast, which was marked with a nearly two and a half hour show. Hryb openly admits that he added to the show number and the figure doesn't accurately reflect the number of shows made. Hryb switched to a #1xx numbering around July 18, 2005, when he did show #136 after the previous '7/10/05 Blogcast'.^[3] Major Nelson was interviewed on the Video Game Outsiders Podcast (show #50), where he said the following: "About a year and a half ago, I started numbering my shows at 100...it makes it sound cooler, bigger numbers are always better."^[3] His podcast is also available on iTunes.

Other media

In addition to his podcast, Hryb hosts a weekly one-minute segment titled Major's Minute. On Xbox Live and the Xbox website on Thursdays, Major's Minute recaps new content and news related to the Xbox Live Marketplace.^[4] Hryb was also a regular on the defunct Sirius Satellite Radio program "Level Up", designed for the casual video gamer.^{[citation needed]}

Personal

Hryb is married and lives in the state of Washington. He enjoys photography, the Xbox 360, the Nintendo DS, and many other gadgets. In 2006, Next Generation Magazine named Hryb one of the "Top 25 People of the Year" in video gaming.^[5] Also, in 2009 he was featured on Wired.com's "100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter".^[6] Hryb has worked with many Fortune 500 companies advising them on how to use social media to better connect with the community. Revealed in podcast #351 that his guilty pleasure is KFC mashed potatoes with no gravy. Larry Hyrb has admitted to having Coulrophobia in podcast #345

References

External links

• Major Nelson on Xbox Live
• Major Nelson's official blog
• Major Nelson's official blog (mobile site)
• Major Nelson on Twitter
• Major Nelson's 360voice.com blog
• Major's Minute

From Wikia Gaming, your source for walkthroughs, games, guides, and more!

Larry Hryb is the Xbox Live Director of Programming and is an employee of Microsoft. He is pretty involved with the Xbox Live community and has his own blog (that can be found here) where he talks about general technology, Xbox, and Xbox Live news. This is also where his podcast can be found were he continues with similar content that is found on his blog along with interviews.

Some may only know Larry Herb by his gamertag Major Nelson since most references to him on the internet are by this name.

Since Major Nelson's employer is Microsoft and he is so involved with the community he makes it clear that what is written on his blog in no way represents Microsoft. What he writes about is just his opinion, nothing more.

External Links

Major's Blog

This article is a stub. You can help by adding to it. Stubs are articles that writers have begun work on, but are not yet complete enough to be considered finished articles.