Windows Live Writer, complete with VE integration

The maps and imagery from Microsoft Virtual Earth aren't just good for marketing, business intelligence, and vertical search, they can be an important component of telling a story. The Windows Live Writer team recognized that and has built support for putting a Virtual Earth map (as an image linked to Windows Live Local) into your blog posts as easily as you would add text or an image (they made that even easier than usual too). Windows Live Writer is a tool for creating blog posts, complete with a WYSIWYG designer, automatic image uploading, maps, spell check, and more. As an example, here is a map of one of my favorite cities, Philadelphia, PA, that I have added to this post created in Writer:

Not only can you insert a map, you can use aerial imagery, add custom pushpins, even use bird's eye imagery like below.  Go ahead, give it a try.