Microsoft has been making a big push lately to secure their dominance in the field of small, Internet-based or Internet-enhancing utilities and applications. It started with MSN Messenger oh so long ago and has grown with the recent refocusing on the Windows Live brand, centered largely around the online services at Live.com
One of the areas little explored in the online services arena, surprisingly enough, is that of Blogging. On the whole, most blogs require you to travel to a web page to write up and post.
To that end, Microsoft has been working on Windows Live Writer, an app for writing your articles offline and having them posted to your blog of choice with just a click of a button. Simple concept, and one that’s been done before by tools such as Blog Navigator, but anytime a company as big as Microsoft enters the field, people suddenly start to take notice.
This week, Microsoft released Beta 2 of Windows Live Writer. It works fairly well with most major blog systems, as I’ve tested it with both MSN Spaces, WordPress and Blogspot and it has auto-detected proper upload methods and posted without trouble.
If you’re interested in giving it a spin, you can download the latest beta for free from Microsoft from the link below.