-- Business blog now available --

A quick note to say that I've set up my Business blog, to be able to speak with a clear voice on both personal and work issues (i.e. by having separate blogs).

Friday 6 June 2008

Windows Live tools - so far, so good

A quick post about some Microsoft tools that seem to be genuinely useful. :-)

Tip of the hat to Roo Reynolds for pointing me in the direction these Windows Live tools (via Twitter post):

  • Live Writer
    • I'm using Writer to compose this post
    • A neat tool, much more functionality than the Blogger interface
    • You can compose off-line and upload later
    • Appears to match Blogger features - e.g. newly arrived scheduled post
    • fyi there seem to be a whole load of add-ins
  • Live Mail
    • I can see my two Hotmail accounts, along with my gmail one in one place, and not have to muck around--again--through a browser interface
  • Live Photo Gallery
    • A way to keep track of your digital photos
    • This looks quite promising
    • A competitor to Picasa

Maybe because I've grown up with & on Microsoft, I seem to be comfortable with these tools.

They appear to have good / the right amount of functionality for what I'm looking for - once I'd installed and played with them a bit, they seemed to have tools that I'd only subconsciously considered.

Not sure about impact on system performance, but some things that've made my life easier.

There seems to be a gap in the market for these sorts of things - I think MS has piled in probably because competition is doing this (e.g. Google's Picasa).

Interesting that Live Photo Gallery allows you to upload to Flickr, given bid for Yahoo! by Microsoft...!

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