Today I am trying out a new piece of software called “Windows Live Writer”.  Live Writer was created by Microsoft as an offline blog writing tool for their social community.  They went above and beyond on this one though because their tool can be integrated into most blogging sites.  With Live Writer I can write blog entries anywhere offline.  When I get back to the Internet, it is a snap to upload my new entries.

That alone would be cool enough, but there is more.  Live Writer has some very nice features for inserting images into you articles.  I feel that photos are very important but the time that it takes to load them, cut them, etc can sometimes dissuade me from writing an article.  With Live Writer it takes minutes rather than hours.

There are some photo editing tools added to the application as well.  You can add some effects to change the contrast of a photo, add watermarks, sharpen the image, effect the color, etc.  Not as robust as Google’s Picasa, but it is good enough to quickly work an image.  The application will also change the size of the images for you when it get’s published.  This allows you to take a large photo right off of your camera/phone and use it in a web format.

There is also a plug-in feature as well.  You an insert maps, code snip-its and even video.  The plug-ins are written by other developers that want features that were not initially added to the application.

All in all, I am very impressed with this tool so far.  If you are writing a blog, you should check it out and see if it integrates into your favorite site.