So I was eating lunch, or sleeping, or something, and Microsoft rolled out Windows Live Writer, a stand-alone desktop blog post writer and editor that is Blogger-compatible. I have downloaded it to mess with at my leisure, & in the meantime, permit me to link to some judicious reviews from elsewhere in the blogosphere to explain, critique and evaluate the tool:

• Paul Stamatiou approves, and provides a full walkthrough with screenshots. Paul also requests a feature that would give icon designers a side project for weeks... See the end of the It is Still Beta section for the scoop.
  
• Chris Garrett at Performancing has a review that starts to make comparisons between Performancing for Firefox and Microsoft's offering. I would love to see this thread developed. (Browser Extension vs. Stand Alone, Online vs. Offline etc)
  
• Zoli points out the limitations of Live Writer as an offline blogging platform, and the seeming disconnect between Writer and Windows Live, which is supposed to be "all about the web..." He also highlights the absence of integrated tagging. A commenter there points to Tim Heuer's tagging plugin, which is not available yet, apparently, but is on the way.
• Amit at Digital Inspiration has a couple of good articles too... One is an introduction, which emphasises the "offline preview" feature (your post is formatted in a downloaded copy of your template, & so the preview is a real preview!) as well as investigating the automatically posted & hard to delete first post for "style detection." The second is a look at how to integrate pinging, and customise the BlogIt feature to add default info to every post.
  
• Windows Live Writer also has a blog on MSN Spaces.

As always.... plenty of good stuff in the comments of these articles too, as users respond and the discussion develops. Interesting to see the default online Blogger interface get some teeth as a new offline product comes to market. We're all authors now!

Filed in: blogtech webtech windows_live_writer reviews