Going live with Windows Live Writer

The previous blog entry “Where have all the vendors gone” was produced and published using Microsoft Live Writer. I must say the whole process was a delight. I was using the 2009 version of the Live Writer product.

Shown above is a direct ALT-PrtScrn and Paste into the blog entry from the Help | About Windows Live Writer menu. This is not mind blowing, I agree, but it really effective and gets across the ease of use that I have found with the product.

The hyperlink at the top of this post was placed there one click, select previous post option,  fast and painless.

This version is light years ahead of the previous versions of live writer that I have used, where I have struggled to get the content and images in the right place for the template that I was using. But now I have been able to download the template, so that I get a preview of the actual layout of the blog entry, even before I go near the web, fantastic.

Setup was easy and getting the templates was as simple as pointing to the blog and enter my logon details. Then I was asked if I wanted the theme downloaded and away we went, simple and easy are the words that spring to mind. I will be giving the writer a bit more of a squeeze in the coming weeks.

If you are interested to get a look at the software go Live Writer

Blogging the new Web?

Interesting title given that I am blogging about blogging?

Well here is the thought. If you do a search for a topic or question that you may have what percentage of hit results are blog pages vs. a static web page.

My quantitative results tend to trend toward getting a blog page.

Why is this? Well, blogs provide an easy framework or scratchpad for subject matter experts to easily get the information out there in a timely manner. No waiting for technology, or getting content into an HTML format, that may take weeks.

Given that you can spin up a blog site with a few clicks, you have a useful separation of information (content) and presentation. This is what Content Management is all about. The ability to get content out there in a managed way. The only problem is that we now have silos of blogs in the blogsphere, enter the search engine again !