Review: Windows Live Writer

I am using Microsoft's cool new blog-editing tool named Windows Live Writer to post this entry.

I downloaded Windows Live Writer a few moments ago and configured it to connect to all 4 of my Blogger.com accounts, including this one.

The user interface of Windows Live Writer is quite slick, and some screenshots of it that I saw online prompted me to try it out. Here's how the user interface of the tool looks like on my Windows XP Professional box:

This is my first post using this tool, and going by the kind of publicity Microsoft is giving to this tool, I was expecting it to be really bubbling with features.

As of now, I have already tried performing a few basic tasks with this tool, which are:

• Setting up my blogs hosted at Blogger.com
• Creating a new blog post
• Inserting images in my new blog post

Let me discuss how well this tool has fared with respect to doing the above three tasks.

Setting up my blogs

Microsoft claims that besides supporting Windows Live Spaces and SharePoint weblog, which are Microsoft's own blogging services, Windows Live Writer is very well integrated with a number of other third-party blogging services providers, including (but not limited to) WordPress, Blogger, Atom, TypePad, LiveJournal and Movable Type.

The screenshot below shows the full list of providers supported by Windows Live Writer:

However, going by my experience, the support for third-party blogging service providers is only half baked, and incomplete, to say the least.

The first time I realized this when I tried setting up my Blogger.com account inside Windows Live Writer.

Here's what happened:

The first dialog gives you a choice to setup either a Windows Live Spaces account, or a SharePoint weblog account, or a third-party account:

I wanted to setup my Blogger.com account, so I chose the third radio button, named Another weblog service and clicked Next.

Then I was presented with this confusing screen:

I was thoroughly confused with this screen, since I was expecting to see a drop-down of all supported blogging service providers.

However, since that list was not available, I typed in http://www.blogger.com/ in the URL field and also provided my username and password:

And then I clicked Next:

Cool. I was expecting Windows Live Writer to connect to my Blogger.com account, and retrieve a listing of all the (multiple) blogs that host on their website, and then enable me to select the blogs that would like to manage using the software.

However, to my dismay, this is what followed:

Alright. No problem. Let me choose my weblog service provider. Perhaps this should have been the first dialog to be shown anyways. I selected Blogger in the drop-down, and saw that the text field below got populated automatically:

The <feed-id> field looked cryptic. I connected to the Blogger website and went over their help and FAQ to try and understand what I should set my feed-id to. When I found nothing, I decided to go ahead and try my luck anyways, and pressed Next. Sure enough, I was immediately presented with a dialog asking me to set <feed-id> to something.

Alright, I clicked the Back button, and replaced <feed-id> with the ID of my blog: etechland (my blog can be accessed at http://etechland.blogspot.com/):

Then I pressed Next again. Then something nice happened:

So I was actually getting onto something now. Hopes raised, I typed in the characters "tocon" into the text field and clicked OK. I was immediately rewarded with this:

This dialog looked quite similar to one of the early dialogs that I had presented with, before meeting with failure. This made me suspicious. However this time I started seeing further progress than I had made with my first attempt:

And then finally this:

Hurray. So finally Windows Live Writer was able to detect all my blogs hosted on Blogger. That's simply amazing. But why the hell does it want me to choose only one of these blogs? I would have liked to bring in all 4 blogs to be managed with Live Writer. Anyways, I selected the first one (e-Tech Land) and clicked Next again. Here's what I saw:

All right. At least I have one of my blogs inside of Windows Live Writer now. How about others? As I soon discovered, to my utter disappointment, there was no way I could re-use all the effort that I had already put in to import the remaining blogs that I own. For each of my remaining blogs, I was forced to repeat the entire damn process. What a waste of time...

Creating a new Blog Post

Anyways, I finally decided to try and post a new entry to my primary blog (e-Tech Land) to see how my editing experience with Windows Live Writer turned out.

This is what I did. I clicked on the button named Weblog on the toolbar, and chose e-Tech Land from the list of blogs shown:

I was immediately presented with a new blank document where I could start typing my fresh blog entry. Wait a minute. I want to check the previous blog entries that I had made on my blog using the Blogger.com website's lousy, buggy WYSIWYG editor. Also, I want to see if I am able to edit and/or publish any of my draft posts that are saved online. Alas! Windows Live Writer fails me. There is absolutely no way that Live Writer would let me manage my previous entries that have already been published, or are saved as drafts. Thus, in my very first moments working with Live Writer, I have discovered a very important functionality that is missing, that will force me to visit the Blogger.com website periodically instead of enjoying my Live Writer software. That's sad. Really sad.

Anyways, I start typing out into my new blog entry inside the ravishing Windows Live application. Since I chose to share my experiences with all my readers, I am obliged to start taking screenshots and embed them in my blog entry as and when required.

Inserting images in my new blog post

To capture the screenshot in the Windows clipboard, I select my Windows Live Writer application main window and press Alt+Print Screen keys. Now I click on the Insert Picture link on the toolbox shown in the right hand side of the application:

And this is the dialog that I am presented with:

  

Hmm... so either I can choose an image that is already saved on the dsik, or I can insert a URL of an image that is already hosted online:

That's all right dude, but how about the clipboard? What do I need to do to insert an image that exists in the Windows clipboard? A screenshot that I captured just a moment back using Alt+Print Screen?

Nothing. Another major disappointment. I know while writing this port, I will be taking hundreds of screenshots and embedding them in my blog, however it looks like each time I have to embed a screenshot in my post, I would need to first use MS Paint to save the screenshot to disk, and then import it into Live Writer. What a shame!

Anyways, if that is the case, then so be it. I am prepared to give this cool-looking application a chance.

So I launch MS Paint, paste the contents of my clipboard in it, save the result as a PNG file to My Pictures, switch back to Live Writer, click on the Insert Picture link again, choose the same image that I just saved to My Pictures, and get it in my blog entry:

There are several nice things that I immediately notice about this feature. The first is the presence of image resizing handles on the image preview. These handles let me resize the image exactly the way I want it to, maintaining the aspect ratio.

Then if you notice the toolbax, it has now started showing image properties, letting me choose how I want to wrap text around the image, apply margins or borders (like a drop shadow) to the image. There is even a drop-down that lets me specify if my image preview icon should link to the original image, a custom URL, or nothing. Nice. One thumbs up.

Next, I switch tabs in the Image toolbox and switch to the Effects tab.

Here I am shown a list of special effects that I can apply to the image, and see it being transformed in real time. Effects include Black and White, Sepia, Gaussian Blur and several more.

Nice. I immediately try out the Black and White transformation, followed by the Gaussian Blur effect and here's what I get:

Cool. Next, I try removing some effects selectively but leaving in some others. I try removing the Black and White effect. The Gaussian Blur now appears on the colored image. Great! Another thumbs up.

Hey, it has been quite a while since I have been typing, so I should save my work. I see a button labeled Save Draft on the toolbar.

Clicking on the button saves my draft post locally on my system. Hmm... I would have wanted to save my draft online, so that I could have continued working on it from my office machine tomorrow. Is there a way? As it turns out, there is. Clicking on the small down arrow next to the Save Draft button reveals my choices:

Besides the Post Draft to Weblog, I also see a third choice, labeled Post Draft and Edit Online. Since it is disabled, I am guessing that it only works for Windows Live Spaces, but not for third-party (i.e. non-Microsoft) weblog service providers.

Anyways, whatever I have seen of Windows Live Writer still makes me feel that this is a tool that is nice to have. My overall experience of creating this blog posting, editing it locally on my laptop in offline mode, and then publishing it online after making a lot of formatting corrections and other changes using Windows Live Writer was much better than just typing this blog entry online using Blogger.com's online WYSIWYDG (what-you-see-is-what-you-don't-get) editor.

Hats off to Microsoft for making this tool available freely (you can download it from http://get.live.com/) and I am looking forward to drastic improvements in the next few versions of this tool. Meanwhile, let me click the Publish button to enable all of you to start reading this entry online:

Blazing Fast MTNL Broadband

Perhaps you are aware that the year 2007 has been termed as the Year of the Broadband by the Ministry of Telecommunications, Government of India.

As a part of this initiative, the Government has decided to upgrade all existing (state-owned) MTNL and BSNL broadband customers with 256 kbps plans to a whopping 2 Mbps at no additional cost beyond what they have been paying for their connection at present.

Presently I have two Broadband connections at my home -- one from the privately held company Airtel, and the other (my fall-back connection) from the state-owned MTNL.

Airtel are known across India for their super efficient customer-care system and their non-interrupted connectivity. In fact, Airtel has become a benchmark for other companies to measure their consumer satisfaction and their broadband up-time.

On the other hand, MTNL are known across New Delhi and Mumbai for their super-lazy staff, completely non-existent customer care, and pathetic up-time. However MTNL is the only other company in New Delhi, that, besides Airtel, offers DSL (or ADSL) based broadband connectivity.

Of course we also have companies like Tata Indicom and Sify Broadband that offer cable based broadband; however, their uptime is so poor (about 25% to 50% up-time, depending on your luck), that they don't count in this discussion.

Therefore, when going for a broadband solution, I went with Airtel as my primary broadband service provider, and MTNL as a fall-back connection for situations when my Airtel connection was out of order and I had business critical work to accomplish.

From Airtel, I chose a monthly plan of Rs. 999 (+ taxes), which promises speeds up to 256 kbps and no limits on the amount of data that can be downloaded or uploaded. From MTNL, I chose their cheapest monthly plan of Rs 199 (+ taxes), which promised me a minimum speed of 256 kbps, and a monthly data limit of 400 MB.

I was using both these connections optimally for the past few months, when suddenly, one day, my MTNL connection stopped working (thanks to one of the MTNL employees, who did something weird with my in-house wiring the last time he visited us to help us get rid of noise in our land line telephone).

After that, it took me countless phone calls, countless minutes of waiting, and countless number of times of getting humiliated by the state-owned MTNL staff (from linemen to their high-ranking officers, who are not even interested in speaking to customers) to get my broadband connection working again. Almost one month had passed between the time when my MTNL broadband worked the last time around.

However, imagine my surprise when I noticed that this time, MTNL have upgraded all their 256 kbps connections to 2 Mbps. On Airtel, 256 kbps is the maximum speed that I could ever hope to get for Rs 999 per month. However, on MTNL, I am now getting 2 Mbps speeds by paying as little as Rs 199 a month.

Look at the screenshot of my laptop that I took today. It clearly shows a download speed of about 200+ KB/s on my MTNL broadband connection.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Now imagine my dilemma -- I am now stuck with two incomplete broadband service providers:

One, that promises excellent uptime and great customer service (Airtel), but are unwilling to lower their price or increase the average broadband speed beyond 128 kbps (yes, that's the average speed of their 256 kbps plan).

Second, which offers a pathetic, almost non-existent customer-care, a very highly unreliable connection, but blazing fast speeds at a very affordable price (MTNL).

Perhaps the Airtel guys are aware that they have an upper hand over the state-owned MTNL because of the better reliability and customer-care that they offer, because of which people who wish to use a broadband connection for their business critical needs will never opt in for MTNL as their primary broadband provider. As long as this condition remains, Airtel have little reason to lower their prices or to offer better download speeds at existing tariffs.

What would you do if you were in my situation? As for me, I am just praying to God to help me see a day in my lifetime when I can get a combination of the best from both the worlds in a single broadband connection.

Till then, let's enjoy the Year of the Broadband :-)

Time to Boycott Yahoo! Messenger India?

Funny that I noticed it, but Yahoo! seem to have got rid of the voice-chat feature in the Indian version of their Instant Messenger program. Here's the features list of the Yahoo! Messenger (U.S. version):

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Notice how the PC-to-PC voice-call feature is prominently mentioned. Now look at a similar screen-shot of the features list of the Yahoo! Messenger (India version):

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Viola! The PC-to-PC voice-call feature is simply missing here. Nice piece of magic there, Yahoo!

Can someone from Yahoo! India please explain why this feature does not exist in the Indian version of their IM? Since PC-to-PC voice calls do not fall under the category of VoIP, I am sure no legal issues are causing this discrimination. Both Google Talk as well as Skype seem to offer this feature regardless of the country of origin of the user.

So Yahoo! Messenger (India) users, isn't this enough to give a boot to Yahoo! Messenger and switch to Google Talk / Skype?