You know how you try to write your blog entries off line first before you publish the thing to the web? Well, say goodbye to Notepad and Word doc, and hello to Windows Live Writer. This baby allows you to blog from your desktop without having to connect to the Internet. You can use it when you’re out with your laptop or when your connection at home is down (happens to me a lot, but whatever). I’m even writing this entry from Starbucks right now. No, I’m not about to pay for their ridiculous P100/hour wifi rate.

What’s even greater about this Live Writer is you can connect directly to your WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress.org blog (just enter your login details in the configuration popup screen) then it copies your “Weblog Style” so you can see the actual layout of your post while you’re typing. Here’s a screenshot of my Live Writer:

Pretty nifty, huh? You can can also choose the Web Preview option:

It’s packed, of course, with all the other useful blogging thingamajigs like “Save Draft”, “Spell Check”, “Insert Picture, Hyperlink, Table, Map, Tags, Video”, “HTML Code Editor”, and more. It also provides the quick links to your blog and your Dashboard on the left side of the screen, and it automatically uploads the images on your post to the “Uploads” folder in your server.

Windows Live Writer can be downloaded FREE from this page. Read more about it here. I tried to install Live Writer on my PC in the office, but apparently it doesn’t work with MS Office 2003. I’m not sure what it actually requires, but it works well with the MS Office 2007 on my laptop.

Evidently, Live Writer is only for PC users. Mac users can enjoy the same capabilities by purchasing MarsEdit at $29.95 with a free 30 day trial.

Btw, I got this desktop blogging idea here. This is not a sponsored post!