Whilst I’m not the biggest fan of everything Microsoft (not too keen on Vista) I must say that the Windows Live team really have excelled themselves with their free blog writing software Windows Live Writer.

Simply put Windows Live Writer lets you post to multiple blogs using a piece of desktop software that mimics the look of your blog. The image below is a screen shot of me writing this post.

The software lets you post to many different blogs including Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type and more. I’ve been using Live Writer for almost a year now on a couple of different Wordpress blogs and its really helped speed up the writing process, mainly because the edit screen is a lot bigger.

The editing tools available are pretty good, everything you need is there for text editing and inserting images and video.

You can add some simple effects to your images and make align them how you want them. The image on the left has been inserted using Live Writer and aligned to the left with some padding to the right so there’s a nice gap between the image and the text.

I also like the idea that you can implement simple edits like change size, rotate and adjust the contrast without having to load up Photoshop.

Being a Windows Live product Live Writer is tied in quite closely to other Live products. Inserting a map takes you to Live Maps and Video comes from MSN Video, but there is usually an option or a way round this so you can post up YouTube video and post Google Maps if you like.

All in all the software is sound. I haven’t had any problems using it with Wordpress and Live Spaces and it really has helped save me time. On many occasions I’ve published blog posts without even loading up the actual blog.

I’ve you’re an avid blogger or you run the blog for your company then I would definitely recommend you take a look at Live Writer. It may be Microsoft, but you may like it!!

Popularity: 61% [?]