Archive for the ‘WindowsLiveWriter’ Category

I read an article from my New Media Expo (now Blogworld) friend Todd Cochrane today.  WordPress 2.8+ no longer pings different services as fast as it used to.

The pings now go out only about once per hour.  If you happen to run a site where multiple articles are being published during that interval, it is very possible that some of the articles will not generate a ping at all!

Well, if you are managing your blogs with Windows Live Writer, a desktop application that lets you publish to WordPress, Blogger, Windows Live and many more, will ping any ping service that you might choose to enter including pingomatic.

How Can You Make Sure that each Article is Pinged When You Publish it?

1. Download Windows Live Writer’s Desktop Application from Windows Live –Free download comes with most PC’s these days too
2. Set up your Blog in Windows Live Writer so you can publish to it from your desktop (note there are many great reasons to use Windows Live Writer for blogging, this is just one reason)
3. Setup your Ping List in Windows Live Writer
1. Note, don’t ping the same place more than once!
2. If you have Pingomatic setup in WLW, remove it fm WordPress to avoid duplicate submissions, same for other services.
3. Don’t list a service manually that Pingomatic also pings for the same reason
4. Then simply publish your Posts and Pages through Windows Live Writer to WordPress and the pings will go out in real time!

List of Blog Pinging Sites that Are Not Pinged by Pingomatic

(if you know of more or see one that Pingomatic covers now, let us know!)

http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping.php
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.britblog.com/
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://rpc.wpkeys.com/

Back in December, Joe Cheng from the What Ever Blog, who also happens to be a developer on one of my  favorite blogging tools, WindowsLiveWriter, updated a Firefox plugin/addon that enables you to hit a button in Firefox and blog about the tab your are looking at.  You can even highlight the text on the page, and it will pull that into LiveWriter, quoted with a link to the source page.

The plugin is not super fancy.  It doesn’t have to be, because WindowsLiveWriter is so damn cool already.    If you maintain a wordpress blog, a blogger blog or about any other type of blog, you should be using this plugin to make your life easier, and make your blog articles look sooo much better.

The Problem with FireFox Upgrades

So anyway, this plugin used to work with FireFox 1.0.  Then 2.0 came around and it was installed on my machine through this automated update process that FireFox has that plainly speaking, “REALLY SUCKS”.  That update killed the old Add On for me.

Let me explain.  Firefox does updates all the time.  They do it automatically, and when these get installed if you have an important add on / plugin installed, it might not work anymore after the update.  Sure these add ons or plugins probably need to be upgraded to handle whatever new thing Firefox has done, but here’s the deal.  Some of those plugins and add ons are essential to people!  When firefox does an automatic update it can render one of your essential tools USELESS and that ‘REALLY SUCKS”. 

The Challenge with the Firefox Blog It / Blog This Add on

So Firefox upgraded to 3.05 I think (lost track of the actual slight variation) and I lost about 4 great Add on’s. 

One of those that I lost (thought I lost) was the WindowsLiveWriter Blog It Add on, which had just recently been updated a few weeks before this update.

I left a comment on Joe’s blog, and he caught up with the comment and mentioned that the plugin was still working fine for him with the same Firefox version.

That gave me a lot of hope!  Sometimes you just have to know that a thing is possible in order to be able to figure out how to do it yourself.

So after I heard that I dug into Firefox trying to find out why I no longer had my Blog It icon in Firefox.  I looked in the custom list of icons in the toolbar section.  I couldn’t find the icon for Blog It.  Then I noticed, that I did see the words Blog It (under Icon view, but not under text view).

I dragged and dropped that onto my main toolbar and I got my plugin back.

So basically, the FF upgrade simply removed the icon from my toolbar, but didn’t kill the add on all together.  Did I mention that Firefox upgrades suck?

To get the great Blog This – Blog It addon check out Joe’s blog article

Firefox 3.0-compatible Blog This add-on « whateverblog.

OK, I literally just finished writing an article wondering if someone had absconded with the WindowsLiveWriter team over at Microsoft.  I thought maybe someone had given them some bad eggnog or put them on a slow boat around the world.

Do people still do that or is the pirate thing too dangerous?

Anyway, just as I was closing the tab on the Windows Live site, I thought I’d check in on the blog of one of the team members, Joe Cheng.  I don’t know Joe, myself, but thought I’d check his blog and see if he was writing about looking for a new job or something that might tip me off to the future of Windows Live Writer.  I used to know some folks there, but I think they moved on.

Hell No Joe didn’t Go!

Well, fortunately for me Joe is still around and he did something phenomenal for the holidays.  He upgraded the Firefox ad on known as Blog This!!!!  WOOOT!

Basically, this little add on puts a WLW icon on Firefox, and it enables you to blog about the article that you are browsing in Firefox.  Simple enough right?

Well since Firefox went from 2.0 –> 3.0 some time ago, this functionality with the plugin died.  Firefox is such a pain in the mouse pad, that it tries to automatically upgrade your browser all the time, so its tough to even keep FF in version 2.0 if you just must have this functionality.

I Must, I must.  Hey I’m a blogger.

So I just downloaded the add on.  I haven’t tried it yet. (have to close out 40 tabs of firefox and restart firefox) but then I should be off and running.

I should mention that if you don’t mind trying experimental add-ons go check this out.  It needs some rating and reviews in order to progress past the experimental level.  Until then, you have to log on to Firefox to make this work.

For a few weeks now, I have been wondering what is going on with the WindowsLiveWriter team.  They pushed out a new update in November, so they were still doing some work there.  However, I can not seem to find any indications that they are actually staffing their own web presence much these days.

I’m not sure if I’m navigating their website correctly (I love their software, but the site can be difficult), so its possible that I’m missing the signs but they seem to be some what  . . . er absent.

I was trying to check in today to see if there were any signs of life, when I noticed that they had not updated their website to include the latest download version number in quite some time (since version 12x).  They are on version 14x now!

I’m on the new version myself, but you can understand how people might get confused on which version to download.  I believe they are both stable versions, they just seem to have an outdated description below the button on the upper left as opposed to the button they have in their actual post.  Ergo the sidebar needs an update.

That kind of sums up a good deal about their site. 

Hopefully, this is not the signs of a dwindling budget at Microsoft in relation to this project.  This is currently one of my favorite Microsoft programs and I think it has legs, but you never know.

Technorati Tags: Live,Writer,Confusion,Over,Version,Number,Beta,WindowsLiveWriter,team,November,signs,life,description,Ergo,needs,Microsoft,relation,indications,versions,website,download

Windows Live Tags: Live,Writer,Confusion,Over,Version,Number,Beta,WindowsLiveWriter,team,November,signs,life,description,Ergo,needs,Microsoft,relation,indications,versions,website,download

So today, I woke up and read some new messages in my inbox about Windows Live Writer ( a great blogging tool that lets you manage multiple blogs on multiple platforms from blogger to wordpress to typepad, moveable type, and Live of course easily and from one Desktop program) plugins. 

The plugin that caught my eye was an automatic technorati tag generator created by Kelly at Kelly’s Chronicles

Yeah, you can see where I’m going with this one. 

So the concept is simple, you write up a blog post in Windows Live Writer, push a button, and your Technorati tags are generated right before your eyes. 

• You don’t have to think,
• You don’t have to type,
• You just select which ones you want vs. the one you don’t and

Bingo, Bongo, Bango!

You’re in business with tags in your post.

You can find this plugin within the Windows Live Gallery for WLW plugins under the name Tag Generator.

A tool to automatically generate tags based on the content of your post. Supports Technorati, WordPress and Blogger

Now, I wrote this post to test the plugin.  Here’s the video created post article:

Here’s my review, post use. 

This is a great little plugin for windows live writer and blogging in general. To use it, you simply type of your article or post, select all of the text (or the desired text) then run the plugin by clicking on it.

The plugin reviews the context of your article, and returns the likely tags. You can then delete, add, or modify the suggested tags, hit insert and they get posted into the html section of your post.

This currently does not generate tags in the ‘tags’ field of WLW, but once generated, you can copy/paste the tags (already separated by comas) and put them in the tags field yourself!

Great little piece of automation!

On a separate and tangential note.  I’ve been brainstorming with a group I’m involved in.  We’re trying to find a good solution to provide to bloggers in online contests and give-aways.  We were prompted with the idea of giving away the standard promotional swag like promotional bags, cozies, t-shirts etc. All that stuff is a lot of fun, but now, I’m wondering if maybe a big fat download of essential tools might be a better way to go!

Technorati Tags: Automatic,WindowsLiveWriter,Blogger,Beta,tool,Desktop,tag generator,Technorati,Bingo,Bongo,Bango

WordPress Tags: Automatic,WindowsLiveWriter,Blogger,Beta,tool,Desktop,tag generator,Technorati,Bingo,Bongo,Bango

There is a new WindowsLiveWriter Update available.  I had a chance to test drive the technical preview of this last month and it has been fantastic! 

Just a reminder this program runs on your desktop and enables you to update WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal and many more blogging platforms from one location, managing multiple blogs.

One of the weird new features is the picture tilt option, and for some reason the reflective image option (creates that web2.0 looking reflection below an image is now missing) but all in all the new version is pretty damn good. 

Image and video publishing enhancements

• Insert videos from Soapbox and YouTube
• Upload videos to Soapbox and YouTube
• Image cropping and tilting
• Additional border styles for images (such as reflection and rounded corners)
• Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
• Support for centering images

Blog authoring enhancements

• Spell Checking in more languages: Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Serbian-Cyrillic, Serbian-Latin, Spanish, and Swedish
• Auto Linking
• Smart quotes/typographic characters
• Word count

Experience improvements

New toolbar makes more commands – like Font formatting – readily available

Tabs for view switching

Improved category control with search and type-down filtering

New look and feel

Writer Zone: Releases

They have made a number of wholesale changes to the look and feel of the program, especially when you switch between views which are now labeled as lower tabs of ‘edit’, ‘Preview’, and ‘Source’.

No complaints here other than it is still a little tricky to find the latest version on their site which also gets plagued with comment spam and I’d really like to see that reflective image thing come back along with rounded corners!

This Weekend I am going to be trying out the text template plug-in for Windows letter writer.

For some time now I’ve been considering how am I use templates with Windows live writer to speed up my production and increasing consistency of the articles I write with Windows live writer.

I have also been toying with the notion of including Buzzboost Java script inserts from feedburner so I can cross promote different articles on different blogs that are tangential relevant to the blogs I’m writing on.

Some of this can be done with updates to a blog templates or theme, such as including a signature or sign off or something at the end of each and every blog article.  But there are occasions when you want to use something slightly less standard but still rather regular within an article.

For example I have several articles I write, where I discuss a specific product that I’m reviewing or a product that I write tutorials for a regular basis.  These articles often times generate the same types of questions and follow responses every time I write a new article.  With a template I could include something like a short list of FAQs, with active links to help people get the answers to those quick questions and then help keep the discussion directly on target and relevant while simultaneously increasing traffic to those other areas where I want to direct readers.

Monetization Tip with Windows Live Writer

Alternatively from a monetization perspective, I could use templates to display ads that I want to regularly push through onto a blog.  For example if I write, ghostwrite or run several blogs, and I have four or five advertisements or banners that I want to promote on those blogs, I could establish a template for those particular ad placements and place them directly into the article I’m writing through Windows live writer by pushing a button with a template.  This’ll save me the time of having to go out and grab that code each and every time from say and affiliates program, and it’s a lower tech way of doing something that ad rotators do.  Ad rotators can be very effective, but sometimes on some sites or for some programs they can be overkill or a lot of extra manual work.

For example if I had a banner placement for St. Thomas villa rentals that I wanted to cross promote across a travel blog, a diving blog and maybe an adventure travel blog, I could establish the ad code in the template and maybe every 3rd or 4th article, I could add this ad code to new articles.

If you are interested in this Windows live writer you can find it here:

Text Template Plugin For Windows Live Writer – Release: V1.2.4 Production

This video tutorial below walks you through the process of pasty multiple images into Windows live writer’s lead you can then manipulate them and organize them into tables.

It also offers a good demonstration of just how easy it is to put many images into Windows live writer speeding up the blogging process enabling you to rapidly send in post dozens of images to your website or blog.

If you’re using a service like WordPress.com or running WordPress on your own hosted website or even if you’re working with Blogger, you can use Windows live writer.  It is simply a software interface to all those blogging systems and many more such as Movable Type, Typepad and even Drupal.

So if you are looking to increase the efficiency of your blogging efforts and make the sharing of pictures or images on your blog even easier and faster than it already is, check out this video.  Its not a blockbuster movie, but it more entertaining than watching an infomercial on how to flip land for sale Branson in. 

On that point, I’ve just upgraded my video editing software and capture software, so I will soon be delivering even better quality video and of course sharing my journey through that software so that you can learn to do the same!

Alternate Video Source

We’ve established a new group on LinkedIn for people that use WindowsLiveWriter.   Any budding WindowsLiveWriter Gurus, power users or even neophytes are welcome.

WindowsLiveWriter is becoming a very powerful tool for bloggers and even more for content managers.  It is a very fast and easy way to take information from many different forms, organize it rapidly and load it up on to a website.  The preview capabilities are excellent.  The program has some room for improvement in integrating a review of a sites html format (.html .xhtml and more.).  It would be excellent if the W3C could get some representatives to wrangle Microsoft in on this, but having met the WindowsLiveWriter team myself last fall, I’m sure they are aware of it and considering ways to pull this together.

The intent of this new group on LinkedIn is not to create a user community for building up better tools for WindowsLiveWriter, but instead it will have the purpose of bringing the existing and growing community together professionally so that we can share best practices and build our skill sets together.  We need to know who we are first so that we can begin communicating better.  This isn’t likely to evolve into one of those industry forums where we stage our own conferences and go on luxury vacations to the Bahamas to hear someone speak, but hopefully it will bring some good professional awareness to the utility of WindowsLiveWriter.

Ironically, the groups and forums at Windows Live do not facilitate this terribly effectively and I do hope that they improve their forum structures and information organization soon.

If you are interested in joining the group on LinkedIn, the group should be visible in the directory by the end of the week.  Otherwise, you can leave a comment here and I will send you an invite with the email address you provide in the comment.  Email addresses on this site are kept private, will not be sold and are not publicly viewable.

Here’s a Cool Tip I stumbled upon by accident.  When you want to embed an Utterz item in a blog article and you use my favorite blogging tool, Windows Live Writer (Free software from Microsoft), its very very easy!

Below you will see the players I used for the example video above.  If you’d like to see more examples or have any questions, drop me a comment and I will take a look at covering your question next time around if its something I can help with.

So that’s it, just a simple thing.  hope you benefited from this and if you are not blogging with Windows Live Writer or Utterz for that matter, your are missing something that is a very useful experience and easy to do whether you are a tech blogger or a movie buff with a collection of rare movie posters or whatever.