I have created my second plugin for Windows Live Writer which is a tool that will do information lookups via the Amazon.com web service.  This is particularly useful if you want to post about a book you are writing.  The “insert” includes the ability to add the title, author, book image, and a link to the book itself on Amazon if you want to read more about it or simply buy it. It looks like this: Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel Read more about this title…   You can simply search for a title or author and you are presented with the results from which you can select the one you are looking for. If you are interested in this plugin, check out the Windows Live Writer Plugin Project over at CodePlex and find other plugins as well.

I was traveling on business this week.  I was in St. Louis for meetings and on my flight there I was able to read “No One Cares What You Had For Lunch: 100 Ideas For Your Blog” by Margaret Mason. This book has some great ideas for posts for your blog and they are conveniently broken down by how much time you have available to post. Whether it be 15 minutes or a couple of hours, there are ideas for any kind of material across the spectrum. It was a quick read as I was able to finish it on a 1 hour 45 minute flight.  Margaret has a sense of humor that will make you chuckle when you read of some of her examples.   No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog by Margaret Mason Read more about this title…

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,…

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…

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…