Science and technology news blog

Indian tech giants, Reliance and Rediff have both started their own social networking websites, bigadda.com and ishare.com respectively. After playing with both of these sites, I was pleasantly surprised with the user interface and ease of accessibility. Since both are in beta version, a lot of features need to be modified. One really bad thing about iShare.com is that I need to download a piece of software and install it on my computer in order to upload my videos and photos. This is a little bit annoying as every other website allows you to upload directly from the site. However, not all things are bad, one good thing is that I can upload upto 5 files at one time, which is more than can be said about all the other video hosting and sharing sites.

As is typical of Indian censorship laws, nothing explicit or vulgar can be hosted. I tested hosting a photo on bigadda.com and was given a tight rap on my hands that very day. Plus there was a warning that my account would be deactivated in case there is a repeat of this offence. Yeah, I know it sounds pretty hypocritical, as if you watch any Indian cable TV channel, you will be stunned with the amount of flesh being shown. However, I think this is not really a bad move, as these sites are for anybody and any age group.

Reliance’s Bigadda.com has a lot more functionality including blogging, although that needs to be worked on as I can’t add images or manipulate the text. Also I would love to have a way of importing all my feeds from my current blog and add it to Bigadda.com’s blog.

Blogger.com, which was acquired by Google in 2003, has helped to make blogging a more ubiquitous activity, especially as more people have grown up using the Web and are adding to the already large blog community of readers and writers.

The latest updates to Blogger might very well help the blogosphere continue its momentum, although there are those who predict that the blogging craze will level off next year. 

Search specialist Google has given its blogging software a major upgrade, adding privacy features, new templates, and tighter integration with Google’s other services. 

With the new Blogger toolkit, now out of beta, users can add photos and other information without HTML expertise. More advanced users can create custom templates in an array of type fonts and colors. 

Also noteworthy in the latest update is the ability to limit access to blog entries. While the blogs are open to the public by default, the settings can be changed to limit access to a select list of readers. 

You enter the e-mail address of a person to whom you want to grant access, and the Google account associated with that address will be given access. If an address is not associated with an account, that person will be sent an invitation to sign up for a Google account.

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Even just a couple of years ago, would you have expected Microsoft to create a free word processing application DESIGNED to be a plug-in for open-source software? OK, so the new Windows Live Writer beta is just for blogging, not exactly a threat to Word. Still, even though some refinements are needed, it’s a pretty neat application that could foreshadow what a Windows Live Word app might look like.

Unlike typical Microsoft bloatware, this installer was a sleek under-5 Meg. Alas, I’m not using Live Writer now to post this blog entry, since it didn’t auto configure with the software we’ve got running here. But when I tried it on my personal blog running WordPress (Planning Livable Communities), it took just seconds to configure.

Why use a third-party plug-in to do my posting instead of WordPress—very good blogging software that’s served me well for almost two and a half years—itself? After a little time exploring Live Writer, I see some advantages to using it as a blog writing tool:

1. WSYWIG. Live Writer downloaded style-sheet information from my blog, so as I’m creating a post, I can see what it will look like in real-time, instead of saving and scrolling down as I do in WordPress. Live Writer’s what-you-see-is-what-you-get is especially handy when inserting pictures. For example, I’ve found it cumbersome in the current WordPress version to center photos and have them look like I want within a post, even when hand-coding the html (WordPress seemed to always helpfully  “clean up”—i.e. change—my code). It was easier and quicker to do in Live Writer. The software is also designed to add maps (from Windows Live Local, of course).

2. Adding links was faster—the graphical link tool takes less time than either WordPress’s WSYWIG or switching to WordPress’s html source (although I’m sure one could go into WordPress and tweak it, that’s the beauty of open source.).

3. Built-in spell check. There is in fact a spell-check plug-in for WordPress which I haven’t gotten around to installing, but having the option with no effort is nice.

4. Easier switching back and forth between html source and WYSWIG views.

5. You can set it to autosave, which is handy for those of us who get caught up in writing lengthy blog posts and might not remember to save. You can also upload a draft to your Web Server.

Drawbacks:

1. Each new post opens a new window, which is kind of annoying.

2. The sidebar only tracks the posts you’ve done within it, so “recent posts” is pretty sparse even for a robust blog unless you’re using Live Writer all the time from the same machine. You can get a list of past posts from your Web site with a couple of clicks, but by that point you might as well go to the blog itself. And I do like my WordPress dashboard, which gives a very good overview of posts, comments, links and more.

3. It was a little glitchy trying to delete a test post that I accidentally uploaded to my live site instead of as a draft. I did finally get rid of it, but not all WordPress editing/deleting views would work.

4. I’ve got no idea what information if any Microsoft is collecting and storing about my activities.

It is a pleasant surprise to see a small, efficient application from Microsoft that’s designed from the outset to work well with popular open-source blogging applications. Sure, Microsoft can’t resist touting its own Windows Live Spaces as a blog site, but once you choose “other,” there’s pretty decent integration, at least with WordPress. At one point the application even encourages users who can’t make Live Writer work with their own blogging application to let the company know. That’s not the Microsoft I remember.

I doubt I’ll turn to Live Writer for all my personal blogging. But I plan on keeping the software installed on my home PC, and will be using it for some of my longer, more involved posts. If you blog and think the editing interface on your current blogging software could stand some improvement, Live Writer is worth a look.

Microsoft on Friday released a beta of Windows Live Writer, a new application designed to create blog posts for Live Spaces and a number of other services. Appearing like a slimmed down version of Microsoft Word, the tool is available free of charge.

Users can author blog posts in a WYSIWYG environment that makes editing easy and shows exactly how the post will look when published. An HTML source code editing mode is included for more advanced users, as well as a Web preview option.

Photo publishing has been integrated into Windows Live Writer, enabling users to quickly add an image to their blog post and modify it with the application’s built-in tools. Size, text wrapping, borders can be edited, and a variety of graphical effects are also available.

Microsoft has additionally including mapping support with Live Writer. Users can insert a Windows Live Local map directly into their post, and customize it to show road, aerial or bird’s eye detail. Pushpins can also be added to highlight a specific point.

“Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone,” said Live Writer team member J.J. Allaire. “Writer has lots of features which we hope make for a better blogging experience.”

The application currently supports Microsoft’s own Windows Live Spaces blogging service, in addition to Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress and others. Support for RSD (Really Simple Discoverability), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API are also included.

Although Live Writer is still in beta, Microsoft has made available an SDK that enables developers to extend the program with additional content types. Some examples of content that could be integrated include photos from Flickr, embedded video or product images from Amazon.

Ever wish you could publish straight from a word processor to your blog? Microsoft hopes that you have, as that’s the general concept driving the new Windows Live Writer. We already know that Microsoft is planning this functionality for the next version of Word, but they have now unveiled a free beta application designed specifically for blogging.

Windows Live Writer (WLW hereafter) is a desktop application that works with several online blogging services. Compose your post, position images, add categories… and publish! In addition to offering a WYSIWYG word processing environment, the application also includes a preview mode that can show you what your post will look like once it’s live on your site.

In the few hours that I’ve had to play with it, I’ve found some kudos and anti-kudos in the mix. First up, I’m pleased to report that the HTML is clean, with only a few minor flaws/quibbles here and there. It’s miles ahead of Word’s exported HTML, and that can only be a good thing. The application also seamlessly uploads images for you, and basic image tools allow for resizing and the creation of thumbnails. In our testing, image uploads worked with Windows Live Spaces, but not other blogging services unless newMediaObject API was supported or FTP access could be configured.

I was also surprised to see that WLW supports multiple blogging engines simultaneously. Using the same application you can switch between multiple blogs to pull down posts, publish news posts, etc.

In terms of failings, it must first be noted that this is a beta application, and a few snags are to be expected. When using WLW to edit Blogger posts, the WYSIWYG interface placed the text about 4 pixels left out of alignment in the editing view. When published, things looked fine, but it was irritating to look at while editing. Category management is perhaps too simple as well, with interface support for only 12 categories. It is unclear if this is a temporary limitation, but fortunately the application will leave your existing post categories alone, and will not override your own settings if you put them in manually.

A home run?

Windows Live Writer supports RSD (Really Simple Discoverability), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API. Microsoft built this application to talk to all of the popular services out there, not just their own. This is a good move. Better yet, WLW accepts plugins, and the new the Windows Live Writer SDK should provide plugin authors with plenty of opportunities for enhancement. If there’s truly a need for an application like this (and we keep hearing that there is), Microsoft’s entry should prove popular so long as it stays clean (HTML), open (Blogger et al.), and free.

That last part is quite important. Microsoft FrontPage was never free (although the weak Express version was), and while many hated it for what it did to HTML, the application could be used with great success by someone skilled with it. Yet that was the problem: FrontPage needed a set of technologies on the web-end to be truly useful (Windows Server, FP Extension on Linux, etc.). With WLW, you have a lighter application that, while somewhat less powerful than FrontPage, is better suited for everyday use with most of today’s popular blogging engines. It’s too early to tell, but WLW has all the signs of a home run.