This is not going to go down easy.

No. No it is not.

What are we supposed to do with this, Microsoft? I mean, I’m all for distraction free writing environments, but if my boss looks over my shoulder and sees this, she’s going to know I’m not actually doing my work.

IT’S A VERY STRANGE TAKE ON THE WORD PARADIGM.

It’s as if someone took every criticism anyone ever lodged at Word for “having too many buttons” very, very seriously.

C’mon, Microsoft. Make Word look more like Facebook. That would totally work better for me.

Microsoft Office 2013 Preview is available for download.

One of the many awesome benefits of running Windows 7 in VMware on my Mac has been the chance to get some of my favorite windows software functioning on my mobile machine.  Since the only _actual_ version (not OEM) of windows I own is Windows 2000, a lot of XP and Vista only software was unavailable.

Now I can delight in running Windows 7 in Unity mode and all the benefits that come with having Windows Live Writer at my beck and call.

Sorry, Mac, Linux. No other blogging software even comes close to the shut-up and get out of my way awesomeness of Windows Live Writer.

THe other awesomeness? Although, regretfully, I didn’t catch a screenshot of it, I did manage to get a bluescreen on my mac. It’s kind of funny to see the BSOD in a little window.

Really, the only reason to be thankful for using Windows is access to the superior blogging client, Windows Live Writer.  I’ve not yet found anything on Linux, OSX or even Haiku that works as well for firing off a quick blog post.

And Great news! Windows Live Writer is Drupal 6 Friendly. Thanks to the folks at TributeMedia and the WLWBlogAPI, you can—almost seamlessly—post to your Drupal 6 Blogs in WLW.

Now, this may not be cool enough for you Drupal Ninjas who prefer to compose in notepad++, but think of how nicely LiveWriter could be used to get non-bloggers in your organization posting to your drupal blog in a friendly way that makes sense to them.

Sometimes, I think, some of us read-write-web folks lose track of the fact that for many “regular” users, the browser is not a client. Windows Live Writer _is_ as client. It fits very well into most people’s sense of how they use their computers. And, it works great. LiveWriter has a Flickr Plug-in, too. Very nice.

A few computer/technology related tid-bits that in years past would have been much longer posts.

1. Look, I really kind of like K-Meleon, the lightweight, native Windows Implementation of the Geko Layout Engine. Think of it as Firefox for Windows without the Firefox part. On the Operating System of the Future (Windows 2000), K-Meleon is the browser of tomorrow.
2. If only there were a similar version of Pidgin. I am now taking applications for the windows native multi-service XAMP client of tomorrow.
3. I am currently experimenting with Windows Live Mesh. Mesh is Windows online folder syncing, basically, except that it also syncs to a "Online Desktop," so you can always get at your synched files, so long as you have access to a browser (even KM. So far, I've got my entire allotment of space allocated and it's still uploading. Nice! I wonder what that means. They say that there is a MacOSX Client coming. It has some kind of RDP or VNC built into it, but it's flaky and doesn't work as nicely LogMeIn, for example.
4. If I could add one feature to the Windows Platform, I would add Universal Spell Checking like they have on the Macs. Hands down, Universal Spell checking is OSX's best feature.
5. I still miss you, Linux. Do something awesome and I'll come back to you. Here's a hint. It's not being sold in a box at Best Buy. Hundreds of crappy software products have been sold in a Box at Best Buy over the years.
6. You should be using Evernote. If you're not, you don't care about keeping notes. I have a Ocono.com Story Ideas notebook that I'm publishing there, but it's not about publishing, it's about having your data synced up to the web and on every computer you use. Except for Linux.