Microsoft gets their own blogging software
September 19th, 2007 | 
Author: I haven’t been paying attention to this one too much, but I have to admit I am a little intrigued. Some of Microsoft’s latest Internet creations have been a little hit and miss and I’m not sure Microsoft really gets the whole blog thing to be honest. Sure, they have jumped on the bandwagon, but that’s because they want to own it, not necessarily understand it.
But anyway, their LiveWriter program seems to be getting some good reviews lately so I thought I would have a look. The screenshots look pretty impressive. It has a nice UI and claims to work with major blogging sites and apps such as Wordpress (which of course I use).
First off the install is very slow and very annoying. It had to upgrade me to the latest version of Instant Messenger. I have no idea why, but it did. And the install was terribly slow. Not the download, the install.
After that 20 minute process it installed LiveWriter. That went pretty quickly and then it installed some other adapter piece. I don’t really like the vagueness of what’s being installed or why it took so long.
With the program installed I tried to get it setup for Wordpress. It didn’t detect the server correctly and I had to put in the information manually. I had to use Zoundry to get that data to even finish the install. So far, not impressed.
After getting it installed and configured I got to the main UI, which does look pretty good. It looks like Word with some options to publish and insert across the top and tags and image links on the right side. It looks pretty good, but I have to say I like the layout of Zoundry better. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m so used to this or that I really do like it better. Zoundry has better dropdowns and the buttons are right across the top for inserting images and tags.
The formatting does seem better in LiveWriter with Word like features, spell check, font selection and the ability to download the “theme” so you can preview.
One thing I didn’t like at all that I think has to be changed before this hits the streets – there are no servers listed to Ping. No Technorati, no Google, no Ping-o-Matic, nothing. I know what the servers should be, but what the hell? Why is this blank? I mean egad there should at least be one server in there. You can put whatever list you want in there which is great for expansion, but to ship with nothing is just pure crap.
I haven’t used LiveWriter yet, but so far, I AM NOT IMPRESSED. Good thing it’s still in beta, there is no way this thing is ready for prime time. I hit three major flaws and I didn’t even write anything with it yet. Microsoft better get their act together if they want to be a player in the blogging world. Right now, they have no idea what they’re doing.
If you want to give LiveWriter a try on your own you can download it here:
http://get.live.com/betas/writer_betas
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- Taking Blogging to the next level
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- Upgrade to Wordpress 2.2 = Disaster
- Need help with PHP and IIS?
- Clearly I need to keep using Word as my editor…
- One bad template spoils the blog!
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- CityScape theme for Wordpress
- More Wordpress Template Spam
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