Windows Live Writer - An excellent blog editor

Sometimes you come across something that you didn't realise even existed and within a few days you can't understand how you lived without it.

This is what I have found with Windows Live Writer. I got it free with the CD that came with a webcam I have just bought - but it turns out that it is a free download in any case.

What does it do? It is basically a sort of blog specific word processor enabling you to keep track of a range of blogs and edit them offline. It has a whole lot of handy tools. The most impressive feature is that it can handle accounts in multiple platforms, so I can manage both my Blogger and my Wordpress blogs.

And the best thing is that when you are happy with your piece of work, you simply press the button and it is published to your blog. I haven't quite got my brain round exactly how it works but it has already saved me a stack of time.

Probably the biggest time saver is incorporating pictures. You insert them from a menu and you can then quickly set up how you want the picture to be displayed. Compared to the Byzantine complexity of the Wordpress media handler it is simplicity itself. It is a sight easier than Blogger as well.
The funkiest feature is probably the least useful in real productivity savings, and doesn't even work consistently, but on some blogs Live Writer can download your blogs theme so when you edit it , you can see how it will look on screen.

Highly recommended.

Why use free software?

The obvious answer to this is because it is free. This is the wrong answer. Time is money. Free software that costs you time is expensive. Paid for software that saves you time is cheap. If you use software for something that is critical to your life you should not bat an eyelid at paying for it unless you are so broke that you literally can't afford anything. If this is my philosophy, why have I started a blog on free software? The reason is that there are times when you need some software to do a quick job, or a job that you do infrequently, or a job that you would just like to do but which isn't really that important. And for this situation it is likely that there is a free option around. The classic case is Photoshop. If you are a serious graphic artist you are going to want to have the up to date version of Photoshop to help you create the images that are important to you. If you want to fiddle around a bit and come up with something to brighten up a community newsletter, you don't. In fact you won't even need 90% of the functions of Gimp. But as you don't need to pay for Gimp, in this case it is clearly a better option. It so happens that I am often in the position of wanting to do something as a one off and I have a bit of a weakness for trying out new bits of software. On this blog I intend to share some of my experiences with free software from the point of view of someone who just wants to quickly fiddle with something. I hope you find it useful.