Why Dont You Blog?

If you click on the link in the post about Microsoft Live-writer’s comments being pure spam, this morning, you might wonder what I was going on about. The page now has normal-looking comments.

(I still have the page open as it was last night though so I made a screenshot - well 2 screenshots, as the page is huge and I could have made about four, but I stoppped when I got the first three spam lists.)

Without being interested enough to go through pages of comments I can’t really say if they were genuinely deleted or just fell off the front pages because of the volume of comment that Microsoft page would generate.

However, WhyDontYou blog felt slightly smug when FireStats showed that almost the first reader of that comment came from an IP address in Redmond Virginia………. Please don’t destroy the illusion that Microsoft jumps to our tune.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Popularity: 16% [?]

This is too good to pass up. There is loads of pornspam disguised as Comments on Microsoft’s Livewriter page that announces the “New Release! Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update with Windows Live Gallery”

Come on Microsoft. Everybody else has to deal with it. You may be too proud to use Akismet but there are other ways to stop getting rubbish comments on your blog page. You are supposed to have programmers working there.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Popularity: 23% [?]

At last I have found it. Live Writer, for all its other chocolately goodness just can not seem to get a trackback ping to work. It seems that of the last couple of posts I made with it, even entering URLs into the trackback area, ignored this useful bit of blogging.

Going in and manually editing the trackbacks didn’t help much though, so there is a chance it is WordPads fault and Live Writer is innocent.

We can’t allow that though….

Popularity: 20% [?]

Popularity: 20% [?]

Despite my complaints about Technorati recently and MS generally, this is really interesting Blog software. It actually does make it easy to include a variety of things - for example, I am going to search Flickr for some pictures of Stonehenge and so that people can be aware of the place, I have put in an overhead shot from MS Virtual Earth. (Below).

In addition to the overhead shot, in case people don’t know how to get to Stonehenge, I can also add a map

This is pretty cool as you can see - the map works, although confusingly the pushpin is centred on the object, not pointing to it. Instinct would say the bottom of the pin is where the place should be, but this is only the case if you massively zoom in.

As would be expected from a Microsoft package there are some glitches with layout and rendering (especially if you try to use complex CSS in your blog) but for about 90% of the blogs I have read Live Writer is perfect.

I will continue to see what else it does and try and identify where it will go wrong…

del.icio.us tags: Stonehenge, Megaliths, Microsoft, Live Writer, Virtual Earth

Popularity: 26% [?]

Popularity: 26% [?]

I am still playing with Windows Live Writer and, as I have now installed the Flickr plug in, I thought I would put it to some good use. So a quick search on Flickr produced this image of Corfe Castle. Overall it looks pretty good, the search facilities are brilliant but there seems to be no easy way of showing attribution of the images, which may be a problem down the line.

How do other people solve this? Do they skip the attributions?

Popularity: 48% [?]

Popularity: 48% [?]

Loathe though I am to admit it, there is little chance I can continue to deny Microsoft are actually capable of producing some good, free, software.

Wow.

Yes. I had to sit down after that as well.

The good bit of software is Windows Live Writer - it is designed to be used with MSN Spaces (Microsoft’s version of blogging software, late and playing catch up seems pretty routine for MS).

Despite it’s Microsoft pedigree, this is actually a good bit of beta software. This post is being written with it, so it certainly connects to rival blog software easily enough.

Without raving about it too much, it makes posting to the blog somewhat like a MS Office experience - easy and feels “familiar.” It comes with plug ins for flickr and tagging protocols. It allows you insert Windows Live maps, pictures and the like. So far, I cant fault it. Hopefully this will change with time…

Well worth the cost of downloading this bit of software.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Popularity: 14% [?]