For the past few days I have been working with the Windows Live Writer SDK and trying to come up with a new plugin more-so to learn how the

SDK works and to see what it is capable of.

I found a CodePlex group that specializes in WLL plugin design, so I joined.  I noticed there were several plugins that allows you to insert a tagline in a blog post that would indicate what music you are currently listening to.  This is great if you use Windows Media Player or Winamp, but I use a subscription service called Rhapsody.

Rhapsody has a web services offering that lets you view your listening history with a variety of information.  Since I almost always have Rhapsody running when I am working on the computer, I thought a plugin that would post the last song I listened to would fit that nitch.

Although simple, it accomplishes what people are looking for and caters to other Rhapsody listeners.

Again, it is simple, but here is what it puts at the bottom of a post:

I'm Listening to "The Riddle" by Five for Fighting on Rhapsody.

The text is fully customizable so you can include your own text and any combination of song time, artist, album and additional details coming in upcoming versions.

Now the other cool part of this is that it contains a link so you can play the song on the Rhapsody website.  If you're not a member you get something like 25 free song plays per month.  Check it out!

My brother wrote about the release of Windows Live Writer in a recent entry.  I have been testing this application for some time and have found it to work great with most blog server implementations.

dasBlog support seems to be limited, although this is mostly because of dasBlog itself.  I made the switch last month to using my own installation of WordPress which means that I had to also install PHP and MySQL on my Windows Server.  So far, so good; the installation took me less than 15 minutes and worked on the first attempt.

Windows Live Writer has support for a number of different implementations including the new release of Windows Live Spaces, which is the new MSN Spaces.

Windows Live Writer is in the beta stage, but is very stable and has a full SDK available so you can write your add-ins.  Check out my brother's post on WLW ... He has some good explanations and screenshots to go along with it.

On August 1, Windows Live Spaces was launched.  This is the rebirth of the original MSN Spaces which provided users the ability to blog, or otherwise journal on just about anything. 

The interface was pretty simple in the first version allowing users to add new entries on the fly from their web browser.

In the newest release of Spaces, users have access to additional objects including "Gadgets".  Spaces can take advantage of the Microsoft Gadget Framework which allows you to drag and drop code modules that perform a certain function like telling people what the weather is in my area, or maybe books that I have ready recently (by querying a web service from Amazon) and allowing them to read a synopsis of the book, and even purchasing it, or perhaps your XBOX gamertag.

Mike Torres, a Program Manager for Windows Live Spaces also co-wrote a book that has been released. "Share Your Story: Blogging with MSN Spaces" was published in March and includes tips and tricks on how to get started blogging with this platform.