I've blogged about Windows Live Writer before, but I don't think I have emphasized how great a tool it really is! I've been using is for several months now, and it's increase my productivity a ton.

If you don't know what Window Live Writer (WLW) is I'll give you a quick intro. WLW, simply put, is a blogging client. It works with Windows Live Spaces but also works with Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, BlogEngine.Net, the ever popular WordPress, and many others. I operate almost 30 blogs running a combination of  Blogger, WordPress, and BlogEngine.NET and I can update them all from a single client running on my desktop. That fact fact alone makes it worth it's time-saving weight in gold. I can update all my blogs, no matter the platform, from a single familiar interface, not in a browser, but right on my desktop.

But wait, there's more:

Image and video publishing

• Insert videos from Soapbox and YouTube
• Upload videos to Soapbox and YouTube
• Image cropping and tilting
• Additional border styles for images (such as reflection and rounded corners)
• Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
• Support for centering images

Blog authoring

• Spell Checking in: Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Serbian-Cyrillic, Serbian-Latin, Spanish, and Swedish
• Auto Linking
• Smart quotes/typographic characters
• Word count

..not to mention a ton of great plug-ins - and that is not even the half of it. There are tons of hidden gems inside WLW If you blog, I suggest you check it out.

Blogging

I've just finished installing my new blogging platform, BlogEngine.net. I have to say that I am absolutely giddy about it!  BlogEngine.Net is  free open source blogging software built on ASP.NET 2.0 with C#! There are a ton of cool features including AJAX comments, XML data storage (no database required), tag clouds, and built in Google Sitemap among others!

The install would have gone much smoother, but being a .NET developer myself - I had to download the source code and dink around with it a bit and see the architecture of the engine before installing it on my own box. One of my favorite feature of the platform is that all of the data is store in XML files, rather than a database. There is an option to use a database, but I opted for the XML storage instead, just because it's different, innovative, and just cool. For now I am using one of the 8 or so themes that come with the download. In the coming weeks, I will develop my own theme (so glad this using .NET MasterPages! :) ....

When I first bought BrentLamborn.com I figure I would never use it. I only bought it to keep someone else from doing so. Now I'm glad to have it since it provides me with the perfect domain for my personal blog. The only thing is, everything I post can be tracked straight to me, so I gotta be careful I guess.

Anyway, welcome to my new home! Drop me a comment or email me brent@ this domain to contact me.

Blogging blogging, .net