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What is Windows Live Writer and How it can be used :

Windows Live Writer is available for download today.

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service.

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.

Writer has lots of features which we hope make for a better blogging experience. Some of the ones we are most excited about include:

WYSIWYG Authoring

Rich Text Editor

The first thing to notice about Writer is that it enables true WYSIWYG blog authoring. You can now author your post and know exactly what it will look like before you publish it. Writer knows the styles of your blog such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, paragraph spacing, margins and block quotes and enables you to edit your post using these styles.

Writer also includes other views including HTML source-code editing and web preview mode.

Now you don’t have to waste time going through the process of publishing, refreshing, previewing, and tweaking your post to get it looking the way you want. It’s all right there in Writer as you create your post.

Photo Publishing

Writer makes inserting, customizing, and uploading photos to your blog a snap. You can insert a photo into your post by browsing image thumbnails through the “Insert Picture” dialog or by copying and pasting from a web page.

Once you’ve inserted the picture, Writer provides contextual editing tools to modify size, text wrapping, borders, and apply graphic effects. Writer also allows you specify a smaller thumbnail to that will link to a larger image for detailed viewing.

Photos can be either uploaded directly to your weblog provider (if they support the newMediaObject API) or to an FTP server.

Map Publishing

Whether you are blogging about a vacation or a political conflict, maps are a great help in engaging the imagination of your readers. You can do this using Writer’s ability to insert a Windows Live Local map directly into a post.

Even better is that the map can be customized directly within Writer – including changing the view to show road, aerial or bird’s eye detail and by adding pushpins (including custom links and/or photos for each pushpin).

When readers click on the map they get a larger view on the Windows Live Local site.

Writer SDK

Already thinking of other cool stuff you want to insert into your blog? Good!

The Windows Live Writer SDK allows developers to extend the capabilities of Writer to publish additional content types. Examples of content types that can be added include:

1. Images from online photo publishing sites
2. Embedded video or audio players
3. Product thumbnails and/or links from e-commerce sites
4. Tags from tagging services

We can’t wait to see all the things people cook up with the SDK!

Compatibility

Writer is a great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others).

Writer supports RSD (Really Simple Discoverability), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API.

We want Writer to work well with every blogging service out there. If you can’t get Writer to work with your blog, we want to know.

Bored with normal screenshots? Well now spice up your screenshots by adding many stylish effects such as image reflection effect etc. Check out!

Use Screenie for stylish, fancy screenshot images

1. Download Screenie screenshot composer.
2. Double click downloaded file to launch program (no install required).
3. Drag drop screenshots to question marks (?) on the application window.
4. Using Parameters window adjust opacity, offset, distance, angle and more.
5. Right click on application window to save stylish screenshot as PNG image.

Note: Use PrtScn(Print Screen) button to take screenshot.

Do you have lot of important data in your Gmail account? Why not backup contents of your Gmail account on your computer for safe keeping.

You can backup and archive contents of your Gmail account in a single click procedure with free utility ‘Gmail Backup’. Using Gmail’s built-in IMAP capability, it saves and restores complete archives of your Gmail email account.

This free utility is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Windows version has very simple and easy user interface for quick backup of Gmail account. To get started, after download & install:

• Enter you Gmail address and password.
• Select the folder to store the backup.
• Then click on backup button.

After backup, you can access archive offline or transfer message to new account. It supports Gmail accounts, Google Mail in Germany, Apps for Domains email accounts, provided POP/IMAP access is enabled under Settings.

Checkout Gmail Backup to backup and archive messages in your Gmail account in no time. Again, this is all free for download & use.