Microsoft just launched Windows Live Writer, a new publishing tool for WYSIWYG blog authoring on Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, Typepad and other blogging services.  Found this software via Digg and it looks pretty good so far.  The Live Writer is pretty similar to the Word and so I’m not sure how this product will be positioned in the future.  With all the blog editing tools in Office 2007, this is an interesting offering but I guess it could be the free tool that doesn’t have all the features of Word 2007. 

My initial impressions of this tool are fairly positive.  The WYSIWYG blog authoring is really good and allows you to edit in GUI mode or directly edit the HTML being generated.  The image tool is pretty cool that will allow you to add images to your post that can uploaded to your blog directly.  

Writer supports RSD (Really Simple Discoverability), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API with more blog platforms and API coming in the near future. 

Another feature that’s interesting is the ability to insert a Windows Live Local map directly into a post.  For now, only Live.com maps is supported but the SDK that is also shipping should allow anyone to create interesting add-ons. 

The White House