Windows Live Writer from Microsoft

Another new entrant into the blog editing software market comes from Windows Live Writer. I'm trying it out in writing this post and so far so good. A very polished program for a first beta [but see my post-publish edit note at the end]. Although this free editor for Windows is clearly aimed at enabling you to write and post entries to a Movable Type API and the WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, Blogger, etc - who support either or both of those ecto for Windows, my current offline editor, or others such as Qumana? As an editing tool, it's very good with none of the functionality glitches that continue to plague ecto. It also gives you a list of all your published posts as ecto and the others do. So if you want to edit an already-published post, you can do that with Windows Live Writer. One feature I don't see is the ability to write and publish extended posts, ie, a post that has a "continue reading" link so that you get a brief part of your post on the home page with a link to the rest of it. Maybe that will come in further betas. If not, then this might not be for you if you write lengthy posts and don't like having the complete content on the home page. (This post is long so I'll edit it directly in my blog after publishing it in order to split it.) Still, it appears to be a well-rounded blog editor and manager, which certainly places it as a serious competitor in the offline blog editor market. I'm impressed with Windows Live Writer beta after a first look and a first write. If this post publishes correctly, then this is definitely worth continuing to try. Nice one, Microsoft. Related posts: Word 2007 supports blogging post to my Live Spaces blog with the correct date/time setting. [Update @ 17:20] Successful post to my WordPress.com blog. So it seems to be something with the date/time settings here in this blog. NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at NevilleHobson.com