I spent much of my weekend playing with the beta version of the new Windows Live Writer, and I do have say – they have won me over again.  This program is sleek, it gets the job done and really – it is hard to believe that it is put out there by Microsoft for free, because there is no close competitor to Windows Live Writer out there. So lets take a look at why you might want to switch your blog updating to this magnificent tool.

The biggest improvement by far is how they got rid of the sidebar, and moved everything to the top of the program window.  I often write with a browser open on the left – and Windows Live Writer open on the right, so I need all the screen real estate I can get.  This new look gives me more space to write – and hides more of the features I don’t really need or use.

It supports a number of different blogging platforms – including WordPress, so that is always a positive. Another feature I like is that they moved the tags, categories and set post date all to the top, so it is easier to remember to set them. In the previous versions of Windows Live Writer, these were dumped in on the bottom of the window and often overlooked.

Want to give it a shot? You can download and try out the Windows Live Essentials beta of Windows Live Writer.  Just be careful during the install, because it will also ask you if you want a ton of other products you might or might not want to install just yet. I give it two thumbs up, a nice improvement on an already nice blogging program.

When you go to set up your first blog though it, you will notice that it supports a wide variety of services. You can blog through Windows Live Spaces or set it up to work with an external service – like an installation of WordPress on your web hosting account.

The fact that it downloads part of your theme to show you how your blog post will look on the Web (via the Preview tab) is also a really nice touch.

Here are some of the other features worth mentioning:

• Image border treatments (including Instant Photo)
• Crop and tilt photos
• Insert multiple photos
• Toolbar alignment commands enabled for images
• Insert and upload Windows Live photo albums
• Insert and publish video to YouTube
• Server-side tagging (for supported blogs)
• Type-down filtering in the Open dialog
• Twitter, Digg and Flickr Plug-ins
• Improved blog account setup

If you are using Windows, there really is no better blogging tool out there.  I have tried a lot of them, and time after time I keep coming back to Windows Live Writer.

Pick up Windows Live Writer today and give it a shot.  If you have a better suggestion, I’d also love to hear about it in the comments.

I hope you have enjoyed the evolution over the years and this new version of the website too.  If you have any feedback – or there is something you would like to see me cover, be sure to leave a comment and let me know. 

Thanks to you all, I appreciate all my wonderful RSS subscribers and website visitors.  Without you guys and gals, I’d just be rambling on to myself. (I’m not, am I?)

So how do you get the two to talking to each other? First, you need to open up Twhirl and wrench icon, which will open up the configuration menu.

Now, you will need to go down to where it says, “Post status updates to other services”.  Click on the checkmark box next to Ping.fm.

Click the key icon next to the empty text box to go get your API key from Ping.fm.  Copy it from the Ping.fm web site, paste it into the empty text box and then hit the “Save” button.

Each time you update via Twhirl, your updates should also to to Ping.fm which can in turn update Plurk, LinkedIn, Tumblr, FriendFeed and more.  Now when your all done, you can come follow me @mitchkeeler.

All you do is give it your login information for one of those three choices, give them your blog’s RSS feed and tell them how often they should look for an update to tell the world about.  Personally, I have been using Ping.fm a lot – to put my own work out there on all the various social networks I belong to.  This could save me the trouble of having to do so manually through Ping.fm’s web site.

You can sign up for free on Pingvine.com! 

Is it just me, or is Apple starting to remind you more of the Real Player more and more? Or perhaps, maybe Adobe and the 10,000 unrelated updates it asks for?

The biggest improvement over past versions is that the FLV support is much better.  So if you download a lot of YouTube (or any of the other video sharing sites) videos, you will no longer have to reload the player if you try to fast forward or rewind.  You can check out the full list of features too for this tiny player, if you are not impressed yet.  For more on this most recent release, check out the “What is cool in 0.9″ page or check out this video:

VLC media player 0.9.2 – Grishenko from Antoine Cellerier on Vimeo.

They have added a lot more video content – so they have both the video and audio aspects of podcasting covered now.  Also the new design is pleasing to the eye and very functional.  One little pet peeve for me was that it doesn’t keep me logged in.  Each time I visit the site I have to login again. 

Checking out my own page on there for the Web Hosting Show – I see another nice new addition.  They actually updated the RSS feed!  Before this redesign, it hadn’t been combed in a few months, so happy to see they are updating the podcast feeds they are watching because without it – well, you don’t have much of a podcasting service without freshness.

All in all, I wish the new Odeo the best of luck and who knows, if they can keep the feeds update this time around I might move my own subscriptions over there soon.

Also with the way things were torn up around here, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there was some tornadic activity that night as well.  Last night I finally got power back here, so I am slowly getting caught up with all that I missed out on.  Here are a few photos of the damages:

Everybody around here is OK which is the most important thing, but I might be cutting down and carrying off limbs and trees for a month or so trying to get the outside back to normal.

I am damned impressed with the entire product. I hate to sound like an anti-Microsoft goon, but it is a little hard to believe they developed such a nice product. (Just in case any of the Microsoft guys are reading, really don’t mean that as a back handed compliment) It worked with WordPress right off the bat too with no problems at all.

Inserting pictures into posts is as easy as dragging the image from the desktop of folder into the main editing window of Live Writer. It gets automatically uploaded, just as any other image would to my hosting account. The in-dept draft feature is nice too. I can save as a draft here on my machine, or on the server.

The only downside I have found (and this might be more my fault than Microsoft’s) is the Web Layout preview doesn’t work that well with all of the various places I write. Other than that though I would highly encourage any and all to go check it out if you haven’t. Windows Live Writer is definitely worth your time for sure and won’t cost you any money.