Check Out the New Live Writer

As part of the latest Microsoft Instant Messenger update, there is a Live Writer tool now included as part of the Windows live toolset. 

It’s free and having now written a couple posts with it, I can attest that it’s quite good:

• It has a single interface for editing blog posts but can publish to multiple sources, e.g. Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, etc.
• Editing using a real client is much easier than the Blogger HTML content editor.  I always found it frustrating to use it because it created some odd HTML choices and formatting mistakes.
• Spell check uses the word spell check and it highlights your spelling errors immediately.
• You can save a local draft so if you editing offline you can save your post and publish later.
• Images and videos are inserted locally and only published at the end.  This makes it faster to create your post, fiddle with the images, add or remove them, etc. because you don’t have to do the upload until your post is finalized.
• The tool has the ability to insert a windows live map. 
• There are a number of plugins available online for insert other types of objects such as flickr pictures, silverlight streaming applications, files, facebook photos, etc.  The plugins insert the appropriate HTML into your blog posts for each type.

This will definitely make my life easier as a blog writer…thanks Microsoft!