In many regards, blogging is rapidly replacing the traditional personal diary. So powerful is the medium that jobs have been lost and people oppressed in countries such as Iran and China are arrested just for blogging.

But blogging at your PC can be a pain. Sure it was fine a few years ago but now things are much better when condensed into the palm of your hand, ready to tell the world about your love of old films or your hatred of Christmas shopping in October. The iPhone, pretty much epitomizing the smart phone, is a great tool for the blogger when he/she has the right apps.

Below is a list of my favourite blogging apps for the iPhone that I use for my own blogs.

Shozu

This app is what I would call an ‘all-rounder’. The developers have gone around to each blogging cake, removed all the frosting and thrown it together into this sweet little app.

As you can see from the screenshot it supports multiple blogging platforms which many of us bloggers use. These include Google’s ‘Blogger’, along with different social-networking and sharing services such as Flickr and Facebook. Furthermore, you can add similiar services to your list.

While Shozu is primarily targeted at photo and video sharing its blogging capabilities cannot go unnoticed and it’s a must download for any blogger who perhaps likes a touch of photography. It is available for downloaded here.

LifeCast

When this app first came out a good while ago I dismissed it as lacking in many features – you couldn’t even post to a BlogSpot account! However, they have released a good few updates with the most recent one filling the void left by Google’s refusal to develop a BlogSpot app.

Its interface is quite good as you can see from the screenshot and it’s easy to use. The ‘New Post’ function allows you to add images and text at the same time into the one post which is something lacking or ‘buggy’ in a lot of other competitor apps.

The bad part is that it doesn’t get up close and personal with Blogspot itself which would have angered Google – nobody likes people getting up close and personal with their services. As a result, once you make a post you can’t edit or delete it unless you log in on your computer and do so. However, to compensate you can save the post as a draft and decide when to publish it.

LifeCast is available here.

WordPress

Without a doubt this is the most ‘compatible’ of all the apps here, simply because it comes from the most popular blogging platform and software provider; WordPress. You get what you’d expect from this app.

All the shiny features such as adding images, links, changing the text size and font are included. You can have multiple blogs on the go at the same time and you can add as many blogs as you see fit.

However, while this is nice, you can do all of this on the other apps. What makes the WordPress app stand out from the crowd is that you can effectively manage your blog from your iPhone. This includes moderating comments, editing and deleting posts, scheduling and pretty much everything your get in the WordPress admin screen of your blog.  If you have any blog that uses WordPress or you host your own blog and use the WordPress platform then this one is worth a look.

It can be downloaded here.

TypePad

The best way I can describe TypePad is a toned down version of the WordPress app. It’s not for the power user; rather the guy who blogs on his way to work on the bus or relaxing on the couch. No need to worry about managing their blog as though it was a football team before the final.

It’s easy to use. You can view comments and indeed moderate them, but the main function of this app is posting and formatting that post. You can choose which kind of line breaks you want and how to align the text. All other features such as images and links come as standard.

A nice app if you fancy telling the world why you listen to ABBA every morning in the car to work, without having to moderate all the astounded and hateful comments later!

TypePad can be found here.

So there you have it. For all our iPhone users, these apps should put an end to your ‘blog by email’ days once and for all. Enjoy being able to create great looking blog spots when you’re miles away from your PC.

Once quick word of advice however:

While blogging from your iPhone can be easy and seem like the best thing since sliced bread it can really damage your hand. Ever heard of Blackberry thumb? The name comes from people who blogged, e-mailed and transcribed the Old Testament on their phones – the same applies for the touch screen iPhone. You have been warned!

What blogging apps for the iPhone  do you use?   Let us know in the comments.

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• ScribeFire vs DeepestSender: One Blogging Addon to Rule Them All! (18)
• Blog Directly From Your WM Device Via Windows Live Writer Mobile Beta (5)
• 3 Firefox Add-Ons To Help You Blog More Easily (19)
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• Use Your Cellphone To Send All Your Thoughts & Ideas To Jott (13)

There seemed to be a couple of security issues with Wordpress 2.8, which is why there are already three new updates in a couple of weeks. I will tell you a little bit about how you can use these improvements to your advantage so you’ll spend less time maintaining your blog and more time creating interesting content.

Theme Management

This version adds a new way of maintaining and installing themes. You can browse and install themes from within your administrator dashboard. It’s a bit like the update of the plugin manager in Wordpress 2.7. You can edit, preview and delete themes easier by just clicking the links in your theme manager. You can also add themes right from your dashboard. Just search on certain keywords or filter on specific features.

Widget Management

One of the biggest and best improvements is the improved handling of widgets. It’s now possible to drag and drop widgets over various sidebars and from your widget collection. You see your multiple sidebars if you have them and the contents and settings of a sidebar widget are stored whenever you disable a widget temporarily.

Another great simple improvement is that you’re able to add multiple instances of a widget like the text/html widget. So simple and convenient, it makes you wonder why they didn’t add it before!

View, edit & post comments from the Edit post section

You can see all the comments belonging to a post in the dashboard, without going to the page of the post itself. You have an overview of the post and the option to delete, edit or spam a comment. This is especially useful for the more commented upon blogs and gives Wordpress some resistance against the comment plugins such as Intense Debate and Disqus.

Finally, working timezones

Up until now, the dashboard displayed the message "Unfortunately, you have to manually update this for Daylight Savings Time. Lame, we know, but will be fixed in the future." Well, guess what, they have fixed it and now you can select a timezone or even a city from a rather lengthy list and your time will be automatically selected.

This only works if your server has PHP5 installed though. If it still has the old way to change the time with the message mentioned above, then check your PHP version.

Overall dashboard improvements

In previous versions the menu of your Wordpress dashboard has been changed for the better already. This time around the contextual menus have been added. This means that with every screen you’re in, there are specific help options displayed in the upper part of your screen.

The overall speed of the dashboard has increased too. I can still recommend using Google Gears to speed up your blogging dashboard. To do this click on "Turbo" in the upper right corner. If you haven’t installed Google Gears yet it will do that and this will save some items of your dashboard to your harddrive to speed up navigation.

There certainly was something going on at Wordpress HQ, because very soon after version 2.8 was released there were some patches dispatched. Most of them are security related, but there were also some new features of WordPress that were adjusted or just cancelled. One of them is the new theme and plugin editor. I really feel the editor could use some improvement and they had added tag color coding and function lookup to make it more like a real code editor. Unfortunately this made the editor very slow and already in update 2.8.1 it was changed. Only the functionlookup remains in version 2.8.4.

So all in all Automattic, the company of Matt Mullenweg the creator of Wordpress has improved the open-source blogging software once again. It is nice to see the software has such a high iteration of new versions. Even when security or user issues are detected, there are updates within weeks. Wordpress 2.8 has closed more than 700 problem tickets in its development. I believe this makes Wordpress really earn its place as the most used blogging platform.

Image Credit : teamstickergiant

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• ScribeFire vs DeepestSender: One Blogging Addon to Rule Them All! (18)
• Blog Directly From Your WM Device Via Windows Live Writer Mobile Beta (5)
• 3 Firefox Add-Ons To Help You Blog More Easily (19)
• Using MS Word 2007 for Fast and Easy Blogging (Windows) (9)
• The 5 Free Wordpress Templates To Dress Up Your Blog (15)

This is awesome for me as I do a lot of my work and writing on my Windows Mobile Device. I have a HTC Fuze aka the Touch Pro.

Let’s take a look at WLW Mobile Beta and how it works.

First, we start off by visiting the product site because this is a third-party application and not originally written by Microsoft.

We download the application which is a ZIP file that can be extracted to your device. You can store it anywhere but to execute it you need to browse to it using your File Explorer. Browsing to it you should see a screen similar to this:

From here all you need to do is hit that WLW.exe and it will launch. No installation necessary. After launching it for the first time, you will be greeted with this screen prompting you to set up your settings like so:

I clicked OK and the settings window popped up. The default settings will work for most blogs. You can also change the language between English and Czech.

I clicked Save settings and was ready to set up my Wordpress account for publishing to http://www.askTheAdmin.com, my personal Blog. To enter account information, I clicked on the Account Manager button as you can see below:

Now, we are ready to write a test post. I clicked OK and went back to the main menu. From there, I choose New Article and away I went!

When I was done, I hit next and saw a screen asking me if I want to publish this post or any others I have drafted on my device.

I hit Publish and the article was on its way to the Web after confirming the account I want to use. At that point, I got a Czech pop-up which said this:

It gave me two choices: OK or Cancel; but what the prompt said… I had no idea! So, I hit OK!

I checked the web and the post was there in all it’s glory! I logged in to my Wp-Admin and deleted it. Now, I know I can post articles on the fly from my handheld device! Sweet!

Not using Wordpress? Learn how to blog to Blogger from your cellphone.

Do you have another mobile blogging tool that you want to share with us? Well, what are you waiting for? Do it now! Leave them in the comments.

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• ScribeFire vs DeepestSender: One Blogging Addon to Rule Them All! (18)
• 3 Firefox Add-Ons To Help You Blog More Easily (19)
• The Best New Features Of Wordpress 2.8 (14)
• The 4 Great Blogging Apps For The iPhone (12)
• Make Blogging Easier With Press This For Wordpress (11)

For me, Windows Live Writer really makes blogging enjoyable and I especially love the ability to add plugins. There is an extensive list in the Windows Live Gallery but these are the 7 that, in my opinion, are a must have for Windows Live Writer users.

But before we begin, I strongly recommend you check out earlier MakeUseOf article Five Things To Do After Installing Windows Live Writer. It shows you how to

- Turn on Spell Check
- Use Link Glossary
- Configure FTP
- Learn the Shortcuts
- Set Blog Pings

Now, back to plugins.

Flickr4Writer

If you use Flickr for uploading and sharing your photos then this is a great plugin for you. With Flickr4Writer you can browse photos from your own account as well as anyone else and then insert the images into your blog post. You can choose to search all images, photosets, or certain tags. One you find an image that you like, you can then specify how you’d like it to appear in your post. You can customize the alignment, spacing, border, CSS class, and you can even choose whether or not to include a link to the image.

xPollinate

This plugin is for all of you Ping.fm lovers. xPollinate lets you cross post to other blogs linked in your Windows Live Writer and social sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more through the use of Ping.fm. You have the option to customize the setup of how your blog posts, micro-blog posts, and status messages will look. For others blogs that you may choose to cross post to already added in your Windows Live Writer, you can also include a footer and/or header.

Twitter Notify

This is great for all you Twitter lovers. Twitter Notify allows you to send a tweet for any newly published blog post. With the TinyURL integration, you don’t even have to worry about long URLs; a shortened link to your blog post will be automatically created. You will be prompted to customize your message format You can customize your default message and will be prompted to do so before publishing a post.

DiggThis

This is a very simple plugin that allows you to manually add a Digg button or badge to your blog posts. There are 4 styles to choose from and can set it for right or left alignment.

Tag Generator

This plugin automatically generates tags based on the content of your blog post. Tag Generator allows you to generate tags for Technorati, Windows Live Writer, WordPress, and Blogger. After selecting all of your blog text and clicking on “Generate Tags” your next step will be to edit them. As you can see below, you can modify, delete and add tags. Even though this plugin is more geared toward beginning bloggers, it’s still a tool that can come in handy for anyone.

The final 2 plugins are personal favorites of mine; I definitely could not live without either.

Text Template

This plugin is a must for anyone who uses repeated text or html in their blog posts such as banners, signatures or an invitation for readers to leave comments. With Text Template you can create and save templates containing text and/or html for later use, and then quickly and easily insert them into your posts. Templates that you create can also be put into categories to make them easier to find if you have a lot saved.

Screen Capture

Currently there are 4 screen capture plugins available but this one is by far my favorite and the easiest to use in my opinion. First you’ll need to decide and specify if you want to capture the full screen, browser window, or a customized area. Whatever you choose to capture, it will automatically appear in your blog post. Once inserted you can customize the layout, size, rotate, crop, tilt, contrast, watermark and even add special effects. If you use WordPress, when publishing or saving your blog post these images will be uploaded to your media gallery.

Which plugins do you use and which are your favorite? Please feel free to let us know in the comments.

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• ScribeFire vs DeepestSender: One Blogging Addon to Rule Them All! (18)
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What’s so great about blogging with this “Firefox with a twist”? In general, it’s the simplicity and the WYSIWYG editing environment. A novice without any clue of HTML would greatly appreciate it.

“So what?” you might think, “big deal, Windows Live Writer also has it”. Yes, but non-Windows users have been longing for this feature for so long. And even for Windows users, Flock would make a worthy alternative blogging tool because of other nice features, such as:

• adding media – picture, sound, video to the blog is dead simple in Flock. As simple as drag and drop.
• quoting, re-blogging and sharing a blog post that you like via your own blog is just a matter of highlighting the material(s) and click.

Integrating Your Blog to Flock

To start using Flock to blog, you have to integrate Flock with your blog. Click the “Key” logo on the toolbar under the “Home” button and the “Accounts and Services” sidebar will be opened.

Scroll the panel below to the bottom and you will find the “Blogging” section. Choose and click the appropriate account and you will be asked to fill out the required information.  Follow the steps and your account will be ready in no time.

After adding your blog, it’s still possible to modify the account by clicking “Blog Settings”, or to delete it by clicking “Forget Account” under the blog name on the above panel.

Quick Blog

Anytime you find interesting information on the net that you think is worth to share via your blog, just highlight the text (and/or the picture, audio, video) then right click and choose “Blog This” from the pop-up menu. The blog editor will then open with the selected materials as a quote.

Alternatively, if the materials for your blog post come from several different sources, you can utilize the “Web Clipboard” sidebar. Open it by clicking the “Clipboard” logo under the “Star” button. Then you can drag and drop any item from web pages to the clipboard.

Then open the blog editor, the clipboard materials are ready on the left bar to be re-dragged and re-dropped onto the blog post. Standard editing tools are available to enrich your post.

There are three tabs from the editing windows for users to choose from:

• Editor – this one is the WYSIWYG environment.
• Source – this one is for those who understand HTML and want to add some code.
• Preview – if you want to see what your post will look like, choose this. No editing is possible here.

After you’ve finished babbling and yapping (and adding tags if necessary), click the “Publish” button on the bottom right corner of the windows.

There’s still a few more steps to do before your post is really “published”.

• You have to choose which one of your blogs this post belongs to from the drop down menu above. (or add a new one)
• Choose the categories.
• Decide whether this one is a new post or a replacement for a specific post.
• Tick the options to help promote Flock if you want.
• Also decide whether you want to visit the site after the post has been posted.

Then you can safely click “Publish”.

If you are offline, you can save the writing to be posted later.

Another use of Flock’s blog editor is to “peek” at the HTML code. I’m not a code geek and I don’t know too many of the combinations. I’m lost beyond “bold”, “italic” and “link”. But many of my blogging assignments require me to write in a HTML environment. So what I do is I write normally in Flock’s WYSIWYG blog editor, then switch to the “source” tab to get the HTML-ish text, then copy and paste the text to be used in my assignments.

And for the minus…

I couldn’t find any easy way to upload my own pictures to my blog storage without uploading them first manually to my blog then attach them (also manually) via the editor’s source tab. If that’s the case, I might as well use the online blog editor instead of Flock’s.

The available easy options are either link the pictures from the original source or upload the picture to an image sharing service then link the picture from it. If you like this kind of arrangement, then it’s fine. But I know many bloggers who prefer to keep their own media in their own place. So, it’s all down to personal choice.

So the conclusion: Flock is, and will still be, my favorite tools for quick blogging – quoting from here and there, for offline blog writing, and for editing existing blog posts. But for posts that require me to upload the media to the server, I prefer to log into the blog account and do the blogging from there.

What about you? Do you (or will you) use Flock to blog? What’s your favorite ways to blog?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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If you are like me – a native Linux user and a seasoned blogger – here are 6 free blogging clients for Linux users.

While they are not as good as Windows Live Writer, they are still able to help you get the job done quickly and easily.

1. BloGtk

BloGtk is a blog editor for the Gnome desktop. It supports Blogger (1.0), Movable Type, WordPress and any other blog platforms that support atom publishing protocols.

While there are several formatting options for you to style your post, it does not has a WYSIWYG text panel. Instead you will find a mix of HTML and plain text in the text editing area. You will have to switch to preview mode to see what the post look likes in the browser.

One thing good about BloGtk Linux blog editor is that it supports custom tags. You can define your own tags and add custom HTML code into your post effortlessly.

2. Thingamablog

Thingamablog is more than a blog editor. It is in fact a blogging software that allows you to create, edit, publish and maintain your blog from your desktop.

If you already own a third party web-hosted blog (such as WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal), then this software is not suitable for you. Instead if you are looking to start your own blog and want to manage everything right from the desktop, this will be a great tool for you.

In Thingamablog, you can find the blog configuration option, post composing sections and many useful tools to help you manage your blog. It is just like a WordPress condensed to desktop version (minus the plugins).

In addition, Thingamablog is coded with Java, thus making it cross-platform compatible. As long as your system has got Java runtime, you will be able to run Thingamablog.

3. ScribeFire

I won’t go into detail about ScribeFire since this is a very popular blog editor and many people (including MakeUseOf) have done a review about it.

One good thing about ScribeFire is that it is cross-platform compatible and can be used wherever Firefox is installed. It also comes with plenty of useful features such as rich-text WYSIWYG editor, scheduled posting, live preview, site pinging and much more.

For those who have not tried out ScribeFire, I strongly recommend you do so now. You can find the Firefox’s ScribeFire extension here.

4. Drivel

If you are running a LiveJournal blog, then Drivel is going to be very useful for you, much more than Windows Live Writer. Drivel is said to support the entire LiveJournal features set, including selecting a mood, set the music you are currently listening to, friends and many more.

Drivel also supports other blog platforms such as Blogger, Movable Type and WordPress.

While configuring Drivel, you will find that WordPress entry is not included. You will have to have the Movable Type entry and change the information to your WordPress blog.

The text editor is simple with a clean interface. Most of the options only appear if you have configured it for a LiveJournal blog.

5. Gnome Blog Editor

For a fully-fledged feature-rich blog editor, I won’t recommend this, but if you are looking for a simple editor that allows you to write and publish quick posts without any hassle, then Gnome Blog Editor is the best for you.

There are times when you come across some interesting articles on the Web and you want to make a brief post and post a link to that article. With Gnome blog editor, you can quickly fire it up, write your post and hit the “Post Entry” button to publish it. Simple, quick and easy.

6. QTM

QTM is designed for the KDE desktop, but it works in Gnome as well. Among various native Linux blog editors (ScribeFire not included), I would say that QTM comes with the most complete features (though it is still far off from WLW) for most blog platforms.

You get a decent text editor, with options to specify categories, tags and pingbacks. There is also a quick post template where you can create a template set that you can use to publish quick posts.

Alternative blog editors that are not on the list.

Other than the 6 listed above, there are some more blog editors that you can use in Linux. The reason I didn’t include these in the list is because I have difficulty getting them to run properly on my computer. They are still available for your usage, but I can’t vouch for their quality.

• Bleezer – Java based blog editor. I found this to be rather buggy.
• JBlogEditor – The project is no longer under active development.
• KBlogger – native blog editor for KDE

What other desktop blogging clients for Linux you have heard about or tried in the past? Make your say in the comments.

Image credit: churl

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Of course the first thing you will probably notice it is lacking is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing mode. I told you it was for HTML purists! It does offer a preview mode, but it is view-only. If you consider a visual editor to be a must-have, then w.bloggar may not be for you.

w.bloggar does offer HTML syntax highlighting, which is something that Windows Live Writer does not have.

Uploading/Inserting images is easy and it all happens in just two clicks. You just click the upload file button

and then select whether you want to post an image or a link to download the file being uploaded. You can also edit the tag options before inserting the HTML.

The fact that it uploads images directly to the blog as you are writing the post makes it much easier to work with the HTML. It also speeds up the final article posting, since the images are already on the blog.

w.bloggar supports many more web services and blogging platforms than Live Writer. Here is a list of the web services supported:

• Blogger
• MSN Spaces
• TypePad
• BigBlogTool
• Blogalia
• TheBlog
• Blog-City
• EraBlog.NET
• Upsaid
• UBlog
• SquareSpace
• BlogWare
• DearDiary.Net

As well as a number of different blogging platforms and content management systems:

• MovableType
• Nucleus
• b2
• WordPress
• b2 evolution
• Blog:CMS
• .Text
• BlogWorks XML
• Drupal
• LiveJournal
• pMachine
• Xoops
• E-Xoops
• PostNuke
• blojsom
• Roller Weblogger
• Domino
• YACS
• Xaraya

Given the comprehensive list, the chances are quite good that your blogging platform is supported. w.bloggar is a very small app, so it loads very fast and is ideal for using on portable drives. It is very easy to use, and will integrate very well and quickly with your blog. If you prefer to work with HTML directly when writing for your blog, you’ll definitely want to take a look at it.

What do you think of w.bloggar? Are you aware of any other good portable blogging tool we should know about?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• 6 Free Blogging Clients for Linux Users (17)
• 30+ FREE Desktop Applications for Bloggers (45)
• ZIM – A Desktop Wiki / Note Taking App [Linux, Windows] (14)
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With this said, there are easier ways to blog then others.  These Firefox add-ons empower you with quick and easy ways to blog.

Zemanta

With Zemanta you’re able to receive countless suggestions that correlate to your blog topic or content posted in your blog post. These suggestions can aid you in writing your post while you’re inside your blogging dashboard.

This extension lets you add your Flickr account and link any image you’d like as well by logging into the Zemanta web user interface.

You’ll also be able to connect to your Facebook, MyBlogLog and/or Twitter accounts as well.

This add-on not only gives you suggestions that have to do with your post, it also helps you with your search engine optimization by giving you suggestions on tags to use when you’re about to publish your posts.

Image selection from related content within your post:

WordPress.com Sidebar

By pressing alt + w when you’re in your browser you can bring up a quick sidebar that will allow fast and easy access to your WordPress blog without you having to access the actual site. This nifty little sidebar lets you view your site stats, create bookmarks relating to your post, and finally you can construct posts and publish them directly onto your blog without ever visiting your WordPress dashboard. Access this Firefox extension here.

View your blogs stats:

Create a post or copy and paste content from a web page and publish it onto your blog:

DashBlog

DashBlog feasibly lets you gather videos, images, texts, songs, and capture browser screen-shots from any existing web page. You can utilize this collection of content to publish them directly onto your blog or your Twitter account.

Supporter blogs include but are not limited to: Blogger/Blogspot, Tumblr, WordPress and more.

From any web page all you have to do is click on the small DashBlog icon located at the top left hand corner of your browser and the DashBlog options userface will instantly pop up.

How it Works

A few steps are needed to post content on your blog from DashBlog:

Create a post with content located on the webpage of your choice (text/quotes, images, videos, and audio)

Click on the “OK, Post” button and wait for confirmation that the post has been blogged.

Now visit your blog and view your DashBlog post. Your readers will have no idea that you used a third party Firefox extension to create the post they are reading.

What Firefox add-ons would you recommend that help you to blog more easily?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• ScribeFire vs DeepestSender: One Blogging Addon to Rule Them All! (18)
• Blog Directly From Your WM Device Via Windows Live Writer Mobile Beta (5)
• The Best New Features Of Wordpress 2.8 (14)
• The 4 Great Blogging Apps For The iPhone (12)
• Make Blogging Easier With Press This For Wordpress (11)

If you’re a blogger and you’re not convinced, here are 7 reasons why you should try out Windows Live Writer 2009.

1. Much faster than writing your post online

Being a blogger for several years now, I’ve had the pleasure of trying out both the Blogger and Wordpress platforms with my websites – and while they were relatively easy to update, just like most web services at this point – I’ve always felt that they just lacked the speed and smoothness of a desktop application.  Windows Live Writer fills this gap by taking everything blog related offline.  Tasks like inserting pictures into posts, and previewing posts, which used to take time to load up online, now happen instantaneously.  Not only do you speed up your work, but you can take more time to play around and edit your post without having to wait every time you make some changes.

2. Ability to import your blog theme so you preview your post as you write

Windows Live Writer has an excellent feature called ‘Edit Using Theme’ which allows you to download and incorporate your existing blog theme so that when you write your post, you’ll see it as it would appear in your real blog.  Think of it as a real-time preview as you write so you don’t  have to keep hitting the preview button to see how your post would actually turn out.

3. Extendible and Customizable

As most Firefox or Wordpress users would testify, having a community which builds up plug-ins and extensions which make a product better is very important.  Windows Live Writer allows for such customization and has a gallery for such plug-ins for you to browse.  Granted, the amount of plug-ins aren’t fantastic at this point, but with the release of the 2009 edition of the Windows Live Writer, you can see Microsoft making an effort to take this community up a notch by releasing official plugins for Twitter, Digg, and Flickr as well as tutorial videos on their blog.

4. Switch between blogs at a click of a button

Write for more than one blog?  With Windows Live Writer you can easily switch between blogs in an instant.  All login details are stored in the application so everything is incredibly snappy.  The picture below says it all.

5. Easily insert rich media

Inserting rich media like videos and maps are a walk in the park with Windows Live Writer.  For example, if you want to upload the latest video in your YouTube account, rather than copying and pasting large chunks of code, you can login directly to your YouTube account from Windows Live Writer, and pick your videos to insert.

You can also quickly insert maps from Live Maps (Microsoft’s equivalent of Google Maps) – again, no copying and pasting code involved – just point and click.

6. Immediate access to drafts

Windows Live Writer allows you to store post drafts either locally on the client side, and have them displayed on the sidebar.  This option of local drafts allows for instant access to any posts you’ve been working on so all your most recent work is only a click away.

7. Superior image handling and effects

When it comes to handling images, Windows Live Writer comes with a plethora of options so you can do all your image editing right there and then within the application.  You can handle everything from adding borders, and resizing images, and even adding watermarks to your photos.

…and there you have it, 7 excellent reasons why you should consider trying out Windows Live Writer 2009 to update your blog.

If you’re interested in finding out how to set up WIndows Live Writer, check out our previous post on Five Things To Do After Installing Windows Live Writer, and if you want to take at a close look at some of the finer details of Windows Live Writer check out another previous post which details how to Take Advantage of Windows Live Writer.

I’d be interested to know ‘How do you blog?’  Would you consider using a blogging client like Windows Live Writer?  Share your experiences with us in the comments!

Title Photo credit: Ravage

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Reading about it I also thought of a few features of my own.  As a freelance writer, I wanted a better set of tools for myself. Of course, I had Live Writer, Flock and Scribefire to dally in but we internet junkies always want options we can play around with.

Then Microsoft Office 2007 rewarded most of us with a refurbished interface. I think everyone will agree that the new face with the ribbon menu makes it a lot easier to start the day.

Although Microsoft Office Suite is not ‘free’, it is an integral part of all who use Windows, and right at the beginning I discovered that I could use MS Word to blog too. A quick breeze through revealed that I could blog on most of the popular API’s like Blogger, WordPress, LiveSpaces, TypePad….just about any service using Metaweblog and Atom.

Using MS Word 2007 as a blog editor is as easy as any other Office task.   Here’s how to go about it.

• The first time you fire it up through – Office Button —> New —> Blog Post, MS Office asks you to setup an account. You can also get around to your account through the ‘Manage Account’ button on the menu ribbon. The Blog accounts box allows you to add, delete, and set passwords and picture options for your accounts.



• If the blog API allows the direct upload of pictures, you can set the picture uploading options too or keep it at ‘none’.
• With the account setup completed, writing and posting is a cinch. The intuitive Word interface gives you two tabs to work with your posts – Blog Post and Insert. These two tabs bring all the user friendliness of Office to structure your post. After finishing the post, one can either ‘Publish’ or ‘Publish as draft’.

Writing good content is the tough part…publishing it is standard stuff.

With Windows Live Writer already enjoying its limelight, why would anyone want anything to do with Microsoft Word as a blog tool?

• Microsoft Word is the defacto writing tool for most users who use Windows.  Using it just extends the same functionality and familiarity to our blog work too.
• Microsoft Word as a standalone application is a powerful editor. The fidelity of the spellchecker and auto-correction are second to none.
• Image editing features of MS Word are a strong subset feature.
• The learning curve for a new blogger would be shallow given the omnipresence of Word.
• Word unique features like clip art, word art, shapes, smart art, charts and tables can be easily incorporated into our posts. Word automatically generates & uploads PNGs for these Office graphics. Where API picture handling is not possible, the user can also cut-paste the graphics into his favorite graphic application and do a manual upload to any photo-hosting site.
• Suddenly, what Word now spews out is ‘clean HTML’. A marked improvement from its hitherto bloated tag pollution in the source code.
• Using Word also offers ease of integration with other Office suites.

If MS Word’s primary mission was to bring the blog world to MS Office, it does also have its share of drawbacks.

• It does not handle categories.
• There is no preview tab. So it is not strictly WYSIWYG as it does not download the theme of the blog.
• MS Word 2007 cannot access the dashboard of the blog platform which a tool like Windows Live Writer does.
• Optional add-ins for blog specific tasks are lacking.

So, should you use MS Word as a blog editor?

A newbie to blogging will find in MS Word a good tool to get his feet wet. Even though it lacks some features of the popular Live Writer, it is a good enough blogging software. Simply because it’s as close at hand as Windows itself.

Have you tried out blogging on MS Word 2007?   If so, what are your experiences with it?   Fairly smooth and trouble-free? Or too much hassle?

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You will first need to install Windows Live Writer to obtain all of the program files (if you don’t have it installed already).

After you’ve installed Windows Live Writer, download WLWPortable3.zip and extract the contents to your USB drive.  Finally, copy all of the files and directories from C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer to the WindowsLiveWriterPortable\App\WindowsLiveWriter directory on your USB drive.   To run Windows Live Writer Portable, just launch WindowsLiveWriterPortable.exe from your portable drive.

For instructions, visit the Windows Live Writer Portable project page.

Did it work for you? If not, leave a comment here and perhaps we can help you.

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Since I’m a die-hard Firefox user, I headed over to the Firefox addons site to find a worthy candidate. A quick search turned up a few possibilities, the top two being ScribeFire and Deepest Sender. A quick look at the download stats: 1.6 million vs. 57,000 and I had a pretty good idea which one was going to win.

While the reviews for both addons are favorable, these addons are clearly in different classes. Deepest Sender is kind of like manually opening a second Firefox window and doing your Wordpress work there while you browse in another (which is the clunky method that made me start this search in the first place). It doesn’t allow image uploading or adding tags, but it is a decent way to quickly jot down parts of a post or brainstorm.

Deepest Sender is tiny, presents a cleaner interface, and it doesn’t run on your web server – so it would save a bit of bandwidth. Other than that, I don’t see too many advantages to running it.

Ready to move on, I close the window and fire up ScribeFire by hitting F8.

This is more like it! Scribefire springs into action, splitting the Firefox pane in half horizontally and revealing a solid editing environment right inside the browser!

ScribeFire has a lot of killer features – including support for multiple blog sites and publishing systems, tabbed posts (you can see two tabs open in my screencap), complete font control, YouTube and Flickr embedding, source code editing, and even a sharing pane to make it easy to check Technorati stats or add to Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.ici.ous, and more! Oh yeah, there’s an options tab, too, which allows you to change several aspects of ScribeFire’s behavior.

The tabs on the right offer broad support for WordPress’ other post-writing features, including categories, tags, timestamp, trackbacks, and ping options. You can even scroll through older entires and make changes to them on the fly. Is there anything this addon can’t do?

Oh yes…It also supports dragging and dropping from your Firefox tabs, like this:

Keyboard Shortcuts:

A list of all the default keyboard shortcuts used in ScribeFire.

Used in the rich text editor (preceded by Ctrl)

• Bold: “B”
• Italic: “I”
• Underline: “U”
• Link: “M”
• Undo: “Z”
• Redo: “Y”
• Cut: “X”
• Copy: “C”
• Paste: “V”
• Delete: “D”
• Select All: “A”

The above shortcuts were as easy to add as going to the Wiki page, clicking on keyboard shortcuts, and then highlighting and dragging the block down to my ScribeFire editor. Holy ease of use, Batman!

Really, the only downside I can see is the size of my editing area. On my 15.4″ laptop’s 1280×800 screen, I only see about a paragraph of my post at any given time. Still, to have the editor reside at the bottom of my Firefox window rather than on another tab or in its own window, I’m willing to work with that. It’s a pretty minor annoyance, especially in the face everything Scribefire does well. Besides, it’s not the publisher’s fault I can’t yet justify buying a laptop that sports a WUXGA panel.

I didn’t notice any sluggishness when browsing with Scribefire open, and there was no major impact on the size of my Firefox install (the download itself is only 250kb).

The jury’s in, and between these two addons ScribeFire wins hands down. Deepest Sender is outgunned and outclassed this time, and has lost its spot in my Firefox addons list.

All in all, you can have your Windows Live Writer. With Scribefire and my portable Firefox install, I’m ready to blog anywhere with an ever-decreasing number of hassles. For in-browser blogging, Scribefire is about as good as it gets – unless you can convince me otherwise?

(By) Lee Mathews is a blogger who writes to share downloads, links, and tech advice with other slightly frustrated users at Unsightful.com.

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Shankar has previously discussed this subject but the latest Windows Live Writer code drop has been released as a technical preview and so I think it’s as good a time as any to go through a few more of the things you do with Writer and describing the changes in this build.

Live Dev stated that “this release is largely about updates to the Writer SDK” but once you load it up and have a bit of a poke around you’ll find quite a number of subtle new features and UI changes. Here is a rundown and a guide to making the best use of them as you can:

Word Count

Yep. This is a bonza one.

In the previous Live Writer getting a word count required a plugin. That was still pretty simple, but more involved then it had to be (such as, select all text> insert> word count).

Now its been added into Writer itself and you can simply go to Tools > Options and select “Show real-time word count in status bar” to get it displayed just like this:

Auto-Linking

This is another great new feature which will save you a lot of time if you find yourself repeatedly linking to the same place. For example I can now set Make Use Of as an auto-link, every time I type it now it’ll be instantly linked to the pre-specified target. You don’t have to worry about your paragraph being filled with identical links either, an option is available to “Link to each term only once per post”.

Image Editing

You’ll find a number of additions to image editing in Live Writer. For a start you can now centre your image from the properties panel (this was limited to just three options before) and five new borders have been added; photocopier, reflection, rounded corners, solid 1 pixel and solid 3 pixel.

Better still are a couple new options to crop and tilt images. No more cut-and-pasting into another image editor for a some quick edits, then cut-and-paste back into Writer.

Support has also been added for Lightbox… which is great I know, but what is Lightbox?

Lightbox is a script you can install on your blog so selected images are overlaid onto the page, rather then being opened in a new window or tab.

It’s quite popular and I’m sure you’ve recognized it by now. It’s dead simple to set up and if you’re interested here’s how you can do it.

Have you noticed these settings way down at the bottom of the properties panel?

Writer automatically pastes images with a drop shadow, so if you don’t want that it’s a pain to change.

It’s quite simple to fix, just change the border once then “save settings as default”. I must admit I didn’t notice this one for some time but when I did it sure made things easier.

That’s just a few of the new things you can do with Live Writer, with the updated SKD expect to see some great new plugins soon!

Also see Five Things To Do After Installing Windows Live Writer.

(By) Laurence John finds himself way over his head on the internet. Too many places, too much people. But that’s okay, being a Uni student he already has too much time on his hands. He has begun his blog Not Waving But Drowning.

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Desktop Blogging Clients

Post to your blog straigth from the desktop.

Windows Live Writer – One of the best. Plugins can be added to increase its power. Check out our review here.
w.bloggar (Windows only) – Available as a full and portable version (can run from USB thumbdrive).
AIRPress (Windows, Mac) – Adobe AIR based blog editor for WordPress blogs. AIRPress requires Adobe AIR beta 2 to work. If it’s not installed already, it will be auto installed with AIRPress.
Thingamablog (Window, Mac, Linux)
Qumana (Windows, Mac)
BlogDesk (Windows) – Optimized for WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine.

Statistics Tools

Monitor websites traffic and other stats.

Google Analytics (AIR) – Check detailed traffic stats from the desktop. Works both on Mac and Windows PCs. Google Analytics account required.
Snoop (Mac, Win) – Track website visitors in real time staight from the desktop. Stats provided by reinvigorate.net
SERPs Finder (Win) – Find where your page lists for a particular keyword on Google, Live and Yahoo! Search.

Screen Capturing Tools

Snippy (Windows) – System Tray Tool for screen capturing. Mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy — and Snipp it.
Clip2Net (Windows) – Take screenshots, add notes and arrows, and save them online.
WebShot (Windows) – One more screesnhot grabber, free version is quite limited, but still does the job.
Camstudio (Windows) – Capture screen activity (vide+audio) and save it in AVI or SWF format.
Windows Media Encoder – Capture audio and video content and encode video captures to WMV format.
SnagIt 7 (Windows) – Powerful screenshot capture and editing tool. Normally it costs $29 but version 7 is available for free. Unfortunately, the promotion period is over.

Image Editing Programs

GIMP (Win, Linux) – Free Photoshop alternative. Also see Gimpshop which even looks like Photopshop.
Paint.NET (Win) – Another open source software tool for your image editing needs.
IrfanView (Win) – Worth a mention here, it’s an image viewer with a few editing capabilities.

FTP Programs

Filezilla (Win, Mac, Linux) – Open Source FTP Client. Read MakeUseOf review here.
FireFTP (Win, Mac, Linux) – FTP extension for your Firefox browser.

Keyword Research

Good Keywords (Win) – Excellent too for finding suitable keywords for your article titles. MakeUseOf review: Get Your Keywords Right.

Microblogging Tools

Pwytter (Win, Mac, Linux) – Cross-platofrm Twitter client.
Twitbin – Firefox Extension for Twittering
OutTwit – Twitter client for Outlook. If you’re interested check out more Outlook addons here.
Pownce Client – Official Pownce clients for Mac and Windows. [What is Pownce ?]

Task Management

Rainlendar (Win) – One of the best desktop calendar apps for Windows.
Essential PIM (Win) – A free personal information manager.

Offline HTML editors

First Page (Win) – Two paned windows HTML editor.
KomPozer (Win, Mac, Linux) – Extremely easy to use and ideal for non-technical users.

Miscellaneous

WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier – Get notifications when there are comments that need to be moderated.

That’s about it. Do you have a must-see program that’s not on the above list? Let us know in comments.

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