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Windows Live Services_1189368000050 Currently in Beta, Windows Live Writer is a part of the Microsoft Live Services suite.

The idea behind Windows Live Writer is that you have a desktop application to connect to one or more blogs and can write to them straight from your desktop. Even offline.

I’m using it right now. I guess we’ll see how well it works when I post.

It seems to be compatible with many of the blog services out there.  It’s evidently compatible with self-hosted WordPress, Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, MoveableType, Community Server and others.

**however, when you initially put the address of the blog in, the first time, put in the full blog address i.e and it will find it. It doesn’t like it any other way**

Live Writer has the expected Microsoft WYSIWYG user interface, it looks good with its ‘2008’ styling – drop shadows, pretty shading etc. etc.

Through the editor you have the ability to easily edit hyperlinks, pictures (with nice shading features), tables, maps (Microsoft services of course), tags and video.

I love the idea. There have been a few applications that have tried to accomplish this but few have connected, downloaded styles, and categories and worked with the blog as much as Live Writer evidently does.

Hopefully it will connect to Joomla (<sigh>) so that I can publish to the blogs I write for from one application.

Download the Beta Here

The installation take forever, like many Microsoft Betas they need to tighten that up some.

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p>Note – if you get an invalid server response error when you hit publish, ignore it.
I got it – looked it up and found this does happen (don’t forget you’re using a beta) you’ll find that your post has been published, and rather well 🙂