Crop images, upload videos to YouTube directly or add a watermark or some other effects to your images. Coming out of the faults of earlier versions, Windows Live Writer has become an asset to any windows blogger with its range of services. It is a blogging application Tech Monitor or Tech Blogger is much more stable and packs a number of powerful features that will be appreciated for general blogging services. It also makes adding videos to YouTube a breeze, because users can upload and add the video files directly to YouTube.
However, the real power of windows live to write is its plugins and their blogging services. Users can add plugins to the live writer and extend its functionality and utility. For example, one can add the plugin twitter notify. This twitter notify will publish a blog post link to Twitter, once a blog has been posted, saving the user a lot of management time.
Some of the other most useful and popular plugin applications for blogging services of live writers are:
Blog this, Flickr4Writer, Social Bookmarks, Screen Captures, Syntax Highlighter, WebSnapr, and Insert Code.
Usability and Interface of Live Writer blogging application:
A live writer comes with an intuitive user interface. The tools you need and the buttons you look for are right there where they should be, eliminating the need for elaborate documentation for the services.
Button Graphics: The graphics used in the buttons should be easily recognized for their functions. Live writer passes this test with flying colors with its well-thought-out buttons for blogging services.
Usage of Labels: Graphics that cannot be made self-explanatory, have text labels beside them. Eg. View, Tools, and Weblog.
Embedded help: Buttons that are not so intuitive, have embedded help in them, which means a small text dialog box opens when the cursor is rested on it for some time, explaining the blogging applications.
Shortcut Keys: Once you get used to the software, you will be using the shortcut keys to speed up its operation. The Live Writer application has its shortcut keys listed at every menu option, just as in graphics editing software and text editors.
Overall, the Live Writer is an absolute must to try your hands on, if you are a blogger.
Evernote Blogging
The most important feature of every blog is the ability to write the blog as soon as one gets the idea. Evernote is a cross-platform blogging application that lets you take notes at will. And your notes can be accessed from anywhere, your PC, Mac, Mobile device, web, and anything else that you can think of. It also offers you other flexibility like clipping web pages to your notes for later use, screen captures, and business cards. They will be searchable later too. The free version allows you 40MB/Month, while the paid version of $45 a year offers you a whopping 500MB monthly upload allowance for blogging services.
Feed Demon RSS Reader
Feed Demon can be summarized as powerful. It is its powerful features of services that will intoxicate you into it over other readers. It can show you the most popular feeds; you can create ‘watches’ to monitor keywords, desktop alerts for unread items, integration with Live Writer, and many more. The upcoming version also promises synchronization with Google reader, which means you can use both readers simultaneously, making it a fine blogging service.
Q10
Q10 application exists only for its simplicity of services. It opens a full window text-pad-like interface with no fancy features but just typing, with minimal guides like word count and spell-check. Its distraction-free interface should be able to increase your productivity. It is portable too.
File Zilla
An FTP client that is intuitive, light, and portable. Just save all the site FTP details in its file manager, and you will be relieved from typing in the FTP details every time you want to log in. Gives the server window on the right and your local window on the left, file transfer is a breeze with this application. Did I mention it is free as well? CoreFtp is another software whose services you may also want to consider.
FastStone Capture
Aimed to service the tech bloggers, it does what it says, capturing screenshots, and saving them in designated folders of your choice in any of the six specific formats. You can also copy it to the clipboard, as in any other screenshot capturing program. One of the coolest blogging services plugins.
TweetDeck Twitter
A Twitter client lets you manage your conversation and contacts at Tweeter and possibly there is no other client as good as TweetDeck. In TweetDeck, you can create groups and track the messages from that group. It supports Facebook, which means you can get updates from your Facebook friends as well. The view is multicolumn, which is again customizable. Overall, a fine blogging application.
