Live Writer and Live Spaces

Downloadable from Microsoft, the Live Writer tool allows you to type up blog posts ahead of time, and if desired, publish the same information to more than one BLOB or JOURNAL with a quick click or two. 

The interface is straight forward and easy to use, including the pesky spell check tool we wish many other web log programs applied actively instead of trusting your fingers to hit the correct key every time.  Typing up a new post is as simple as most email interfaces with pictures, hyperlinks, maps, tags and much more.

Live Space is the Microsoft blog, email, networking tool and more in an integrated package with many modules used in other blogging and networking tools.  Just what I need, one more blog or networking tool.

I think I’ll be using it a bunch in the future.

Test Live Writer on Weee PC

Does it work?  Do we like it?  Am I more likely to blog if I can use this tool?

MAYBE!!

Happy to be running out of excuses!

I've been writing on my work laptop (bad, bad Dragon) or my home desktop, but it's a challenge to use two different machines, even with the wonders of technology they have today with USB drives and data cards. If I'm using the laptop, there is often the lure of my email from the day job to distract me, and on the desktop there are chat programs and web site things I can play and learn with for hours!

In December I bot an Eee PC to use for writing. The little machine came with Linux, and while it's a fine OS, I just didn't want to learn something NEW while I'm supposed to be writing. It's not like I need an excuse to be distracted by technology, but it happens. Often.

Julia Hunter, a fellow writer and friend of mine, turned me on to this little Netbook at the 2008 ECWC and then volunteered her DH to help put the XP OS on it for me. Mr. Tech made it all happen, even adding MS Word so I had no excues not to WRITE, and he turned it over to me today - YEAH!

We hooked up at a local coffee shop and chatted a bit about the technology, and some things I was hoping to do, then we went to work. Julia wrote an article on body language while Mr. Tech grumbled about connecting to the computer in his office on one laptop and while poking around in his Zune list on another! (Yes, he had two!) Together Julia and Mr. Tech bring multitasking to a whole new level.

And I wrote. It's the first time I have committed a whole hour to my current WIP since the end of NaNo 2008 and I was thrilled when the fingers stared to fly over the little keyboard and my ideas were making it onto the page! YEAH!! Mucho thanks to Mr. Tech and Julia for the conversation, inspiration and assistance, I hope we can make a regular coffee shop thing in the future.

I'm happy to have the Weee PC (the current nickname) dedicated to writing. I'll be looking for a new meter for the current WIP, the second in the series, but I have until the end of the month to make the 10,000 works for my January goal, so I think I will begin NOW!

Tag! I'm it! Now you're it!

SIX THINGS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY-- Tag, now you're it!

Lynnette Baughman author of Love with a Welcome Stranger is blogging and playing tag at Authors and Books.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, snow flakes that stay on my nose and eye lashes, silver white winters that ... wait, that's not quite right...

The Rules:
Link to the person who tagged you. (Check, double linkage!)
Write down six things that make you happy. (Check see the list below, in mostly no particular order.)
Post these rules. (Check)
Tag six others. (Check! x6)
Notify me that you've tagged six others--or not. (The mail is on the way, check!)
AND please check out the websites of the folks I TAGGED -- see the links below.

I did them a little out of order but here are the folks I've TAGGED!! (who may not have already been tagged *wicked giggles*)

Elizabeth Darvill
Kate Diamond
Strategerie at The Little Pink Clubhouse
Aurrora St. James
Emma Pedersen

My Six Happy things...

1. My family and friends, all of them. Thought they drive me bonkers most days, I don't know how I could live a day without them.
2. Sad songs, which seems weird, but I'm often happy that person is 'not me' but also I have had music help me through some of the worst times so I can find happiness again.
3. Chocolate - this may be cheating but I don't dare.
4. When the "Ah Ha!" moment finally comes on a problem I've been noodling for days!
5. Using video hack and slash game to take out my frustrations, and being happy afterward!
   
6. Reading and/or Writing (come on you knew it was going to be here, don't look so surprised)
   

Fun, but a good way to loose track of time!

Ack.. see what visiting other blogs can make you do?