Using Windows Live Writer with Great News

Please indulge me as I experiment with Great News (newsreader) and Windows Live Writer (a blog editor by Microsoft).

I’ve already told you how much I like Great News. In my opinion it is the best desktop newsreader bar none, and it’s also free. The latest version also comes with a plugin for Windows Live Writer and so far so good.

Live Writer has an easy to use interface and shows a lot of potential. My old favorite blog editor w.bloggar has been my trustee sidekick for several years but future support is uncertain so I’m keeping my options open.

Live Writer is by no means perfect. It lacks an undo feature and I don’t see any way to edit my template code. It can also be a resource pig after being loaded for awhile so it must have a memory leak somewhere.

Nevertheless it does have some nifty features such as a WSYWIG post editor, support for configurable tags, plugins, inserting maps, customizable urls to ping your favorite feed aggregators, and the ability to preview posts with your default css styles.

Using Windows Live Writer is a snap. Whilst reading a post in Great News just click on the ‘blog this’  link at the bottom and up pops a menu. Click on the link for Live Writer and it will load the post editor with the title, content and a link to the original post already done for you. What could be easier than that?

For a free product that integrates seamlessly with my newsreader it is proving itself to be very useful indeed.

COMING SOON: Watch for my next post on how to use your newsreader with Google’s ‘Writely’ for blogging posts. Should be a good one.