There’s been rumbling over the last few days over a new tool from Microsoft called Windows Live Writer…

What does it do? Well you’re looking at it. It’s a stand alone blogging tool that runs on Windows XP (and presumably Vista), that interacts with many of the blogging software commonly in use, including WordPress.

The program lets you draft your entry locally on your computer and when competed lets you upload it to your blog as either a draft or an actual entry.

It appears to play along well with your blog, when you configure the program it automagically downloads your “editing style” so that you can get a preview of just how your posts will look once you’ve uploaded them. However, unlike with WordPress which requires you to save the post in order to see the changes thereby making you wait for the page to reload, with Windows Live Writer all you need to do is select Web Preview from the View Menu or hit and poof, you get a preview of your post.

Just as important is a spell checker - although the word blogging isn’t in the dictionary! :)

Other option include your standard bold italic and strikethrough text, however you can now add underlining and easy color changes.

Obviously you can add links, and pictures, but

blockquotes are pretty easy too.

And this is pretty cool… You can even insert maps

and also aerial photos as well. Both of these come from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth service.

I just started playing with the software, but so far it’s not bad…  One thing it doesn’t do though is More tags…