Windows Live Writer

  • Article

I'm a big fan of our Windows Live Writer product, and everyone I’ve managed to persuade to talk a look at it has given rave reviews. What is it? In summary:

  • It's a blogging tool that integrates with a whole host of blogging services including Live Spaces, WordPress, LiveJournal, Blogger, SharePoint, Community Server, and others
  • It lets you do useful things like writing a blog post offline, does proper spell checking, provides excellent formatting facilities, deals with rich media like video, and generally just makes your life as a blogger much easier. I like the flexible publishing options too like specifying the “to publish” date and time for delayed blogging.
  • It can also be extended with plugins, and there's a gallery where you can take a look at (and download) plugins that have been developed. Or download the SDK to have a go yourself.

If you're into blogging, whether personal or business, it's definitely worth a look. And we're now officially targeting the product (currently in beta) at the UK market so expect to see more about it in the coming couple of months.

UPDATE: If you've seen the announcements around beta 2 of Live Writer you'll know that this post was a sort of "seed planting" post based on the fact that we were just about to announce beta 2. Given that we've now done that, take a look at http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/ for some insights into what is new in this release. And also be aware from a "UK interest" point of view, as mentioned above we are now specifically targeting the UK market with Writer. What does that actually mean to you folks in real terms? Essentially you'll see an increase in Writer activity from the UK team, both from our OSG organisation (Online Services Group, which incorporates MSN) and from Microsoft teams such as the Developer and Platform group that I'm a part of. Bottom line: The ante is being upped.