VisualBlogger 2004 follows Microsoft Office style

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In my never-ending quest to find a decent blog tool, I am giving VisualBlogger 2004 (beta 2) a whirl. The set up was easy, even without an installer. The documentation is weak, but I didn't need it. That's a sign that the either the app is good or I am smart, I will let you come to your own conclusion. I'm thinking the former. Whatever. Most of my job has to do with documenting Office programmability features (and we could do better there, too!), so I always have an eye on the user assistance side of things.

VisualBlogger 2004 UI clearly borrows quite heavily from the Office style, buttons, the works. It's a .NET Winform app (wise choice), and so far I like many aspects of it. Image insertion doesn't work right, and simple things minimize and maximizing the window work unpredictably. For example, minimizing puts it in the systray, not on the taskbar. Wrong API call, guys. Hey, that's what beta is all about anyway. They made it easy for me to submit a bug using a little bug icon on the right. That was smart.

I am not sure what the ScratchPad is for (except the obvious), and there is not easy support for audio insertions like BlogJet. However, I really like that it supports mulitple categories, and the setup of the blog account was easier than BlogJet. Overall, I rate it pretty highly, and I will use it for the week instead of BlogJet and see how things go.

Here's a screen shot of me composing this blog entry:

 I went to Salt Lake City for the wedding of one of my very best friends. He is a very well-respected sound engineer, and his guest list was a who's-who of the music scene there with some well-known talents. One of the guests is an acquaintance of mine, Finn Bjarnson from Kaskade. If you purchase an iTunes mini player, one of his tunes comes with the device. Check out their latest album: here. I also heard Amy Gileadi (accompanied by her husband, Yoni) do some simple ballads. Her voice is heavenly. Words cannot describe it. Yoni just took third in a big David Bowie re-mix contest. Check out the result here: Major Tom is a Lucky Guy. More on the artists later.

Rock on.