Testing Microsoft’s Live Writer (beta)

I recently downloaded the beta version of Microsoft’s new blogging tool, called Live Writer. This is my first post from my brand spanking new installation of this tool.

Despite the confusion with the “Live” trademark representing Microsoft’s web-based initiatives, Live Writer must be installed as a standard Windows application. From first blush, it appears that you can view this tool as an offline editor for your blog–where your blog can be any of several of the most popular blog types (WordPress, MSN Spaces, Blogger, TypePad, etc.)

I’ve encountered a few minor problems:

1. I have a large number of hierarchical categories. Unfortunately, I can’t see all of them because the Live Writer drop down doesn’t give me a way of scrolling down. It would be nice if it could display my categories in a vertically scrollable checked tree view.
2. I use a custom template called Neuron 1.5.1 on this blog. When connecting to my blog initially, Live Writer complained about the fact that it was missing some style information–and therefore, my blog postings in LIve Writer may not match my blog’s style.

Here’s a picture (to test the uploading capabilities):

Here’s a map of the Sever’s Corn Maze in Shakopee, MN (to test the map inclusion capabilities):

Post-Upload Comments:

1. For whatever reason, my delicio.us and digg icons were displayed to the right of the aerial map, rather than on the next line.
2. I tried editing the post (by adding an extra carriage return after the image) in Live Writer, and (rather than overwriting the current post), it created a new post (not the desired behavior).
3. Conceptually, I like the idea of an offline blogging tool–I’m not always connected to the grid. I’ll have to try Live Writer out a bit more to see what additional value it can give me.
4. I think I’d like to have a tool that would allow me to direct the same post to more than one blog, allowing me to cater some of my content to specific audiences. Live Writer doesn’t appear to have this capability at this time.
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