Dave Winer more or less lays one on the head of today’s internet darling, Microsoft’s Live Writer.  Granted, he starts out saying its great that Microsoft made it, but the tone is more rain than sunshine.

He says it should be part of the browser.  Maybe, but let’s not forget that something in the nature of .00001% of the people who use browsers blog.  It would be feature overload for most- similar to the way I felt when I tried Opera.  There is a marginal utility to adding features to software.

Just because you can add something doesn’t mean you should.

Back in the day, I used the free version of Microsoft’s Front Page HTML editor to create some early web pages.  So there was a wysiwyg editor back then for the task at hand- nobody knew a blog from a grasshopper back then.  Later, as I learned html, I used the excellent, but long forgotten HotMetal Pro.  Even today there is one wysiwyg HTML editor that I like- Namo Web Editor.  It’s not the wysiwyg editor part that makes Live Writer so interesting- it’s its simplicity and the way it works across many platforms.

Dave is a scientist.  He creates very cool stuff for geeks.  Microsoft is a merchant.  It creates stuff for the masses.  The reason there is a market for what Microsoft makes is because there are a lot of people who are not smart enough to use what Dave makes.

Well there’s that and all the money Microsoft has to promote its products.

But the bottom line is that Microsoft has made something that can be used by non-geeks and non-programmers to fill a need.  That’s why I think it will take off while some perhaps cooler, but harder, products didn’t.

Sometimes Dave-light is good enough.

Technorati Tags: live writer

Dwight Silverman raves about the public beta of Microsoft’s new blog editor, Windows Live Writer.  Ed Bott does too.

Ed points out that the guy behind Live Writer is J. J. Allaire, founder of Allaire Corp., which developed web site editors ColdFusion and HomeSite.  Those were good programs, so that bodes well for Live Writer.

I’m writing this post with Live Writer and although the proof is in how it will look once I publish it- so far it looks really nifty.

I need to test an image insert, so here’s another photo from our recent trip to the Frio River.

And I need to test the maps, so here’s a map of Concan, Texas.  You can see the Frio River running north to south.

 

Two Features I Really, Really Want

Here are two features I want (paging J.J.)- a way to upload an image to allyoucanupload.com and insert it into a blog post with one click.  Now that would be righteous.  Also a plug-in for making Technorati tags is a must.

As many of you know, I host my own blog and related content, but use blogger to create and publish posts.  While I have long wanted to move to WordPress, only to be stopped in my tracks by URL handling problems, Blogger is not a bad platform at all- at least when you use it the way I do.

One thing that I don’t like about Blogger, however, is its 18th century looking spell checker.  A more robust spell checker alone might be enough to get me to adopt Live Writer (why do I think Day Tripper every time I type that?).

UPDATE: After I temporarily disabled Zone Alarm so the program could communicate with my server in order to upload photos, it works really well.  Give me the two features described above and I’m sold.