A Lifehacker article talks about the top 10 tools to help with blogging.  It lists things like tools to help you cut and paste, Google Alerts to help you find things to write about and things like that.  But it doesn’t actually talk about any editing tools, in particular Windows Live Writer.

My friend Rob tipped me off to Windows Live Writer a few months ago.  I was a little skeptical, but tried it out anyway.  I haven’t look back since.

Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer is probably the single most useful program I’ve downloaded off the Internet in quite some time.  It’s a free program that allows you to create and edit blog entries offline for most of the major blog systems out there.  But it’s not some cheesy kludge — it’s a full-featured rich-content editor.  You can create a list of frequency used links that you can easily insert into an entry and plug-ins you can add to give you extra formatting and other options.  One I use allows me to insert pre-formatted source code and add line numbers and alternating shading.

There are even instructions out there to show you how to create a stand-alone version you can install on a USB flash drive so you can use it anywhere without having to install it anew.  Very cool.

A banner ad on geocaching.com caught my eye recently.  Clicking on it took me to The Globetrotter’s LogBook website.  There are actually six different logbooks to choose from:

• Countries of the World
• Flight Register (for when you’ve filled up the Flights section of Countries of the World)
• Vaccination Register (for people who apparently have way too many vaccinations!)
• Trip Notebook (for when you’ve filled up the Notes section of the Countries of the World)
• Surprise (This is a buy-on-faith type of book, I guess.)
• Flanders’ Six Divine Cities ("118 top sights-to-see-before-you-die, carefully selected by the Flemish Tourist Office")

Basically, they’re small hard cover notebooks, similar to Moleskine notebooks, that have pre-printed pages tailored for travellers.  The Countries of the World book has box for each of the "current 193 countries (and their 58 overseas dependencies)" with some key facts about the country and then a space for a passport/customs/immigration stamp or anything else you can stamp it with.  There are other sections in this book for the flights you’ve taken (including room for the pilot’s signature), the vaccinations you may have had, places to make more detailed notes about your trips and experiences, and other stuff.  It seems like they’re also individually numbered because you can register them online and gain access to more content.

I might just have to pick one up before my trip to Greece.

Updated: I’ve added pictures.

A little while ago I wrote about coming across the Eye-Fi while surfing the ‘net.  An Eye-Fi is a nifty 2Gb SD card that has the ability to connect via WiFi to upload its pictures automatically to a variety of destinations.  Earlier this week I decided that it was time to pick one up for myself, so I visited the Eye-Fi website and perused the list of online retailers.  None of the retailers listed seemed to offer shipping to Canada, so I ordered one from Buy.com who were offering new Google Checkout users a $10 discount and had it shipped to the UPS Store just across the border in Ogdensburg.  It shipped promptly and arrived at the store yesterday.  I drove down after work on Friday and picked it up.

Upon returning home, I opened the courier bubble pack and was happy to see that it wasn’t sealed in one of those annoying plastic packages that you need a chainsaw to open, but rather simple plastic wrap.  Opening the clever sliding package, I found the orange Eye-Fi chip in a sleek USB SD card reader.  The instructions consisted of four basic steps:

1. Plug it in and wait for Windows to identify it.  (There’s also a set of instructions for Macs.)
2. Install the software from the chip in the reader.
3. Configure the Eye-Fi card for your wireless network and also where you want it to send the pictures.
4. Put the card in the camera and make sure it’s working.

The only thing I did that’s not on that list was reboot between steps 2 and 3.  I also updated both the Eye-Fi Manager software and the card’s firmware.

I configured it to send pictures to my Gallery2 site.  All it needed was my username, password and the URL to the gallery.  I took a couple of pictures and watched as they were retrieved from the camera.  The pictures ended up in an album with today’s date in the name.  Very cool!

So, basically, I can take pictures and when I get home, all I have to do is turn my camera on for a couple of minutes to allow it time to transfer the pictures.  Very very cool!

At just under $100, it’s about four-times as expensive as a conventional 2 Gb SD card, but then those cards can’t wirelessly transfer their pictures to wherever the owner wants.  Definitely worth checking out!

Read the rest of the article to see the pictures

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While browsing the Internet looking for an upgrade to the Gallery software I use to put my pictures on the ‘net I came across something called "Eye-Fi".  Apparently, you can now buy an SD card that can connect via WiFi and upload its pictures to various online services, including a number of photo gallery packages, and social networking sites like Facebook.  When you’re out shooting pictures, it behaves like a normal 2 Gb SD card.  When you return home to your WiFi network, it automatically connects to the network and starts transferring the pictures when you turn on the camera.  Assuming your camera uses SD cards, you don’t need to do anything other than pop it into your camera and start shooting.

In theory, you can probably use it with any open access point, too, but many WiFi hotspots require you to login with a browser before you can use the access point.  According to the Eye-Fi website, you can’t use it with those types of access points at this time.  It supports the various levels of security that exist for WiFi such as WEP, WPA and so on.

The Eye-Fi seems to cost about $100 from various online retailers, which is about four times what a 2 Gb SD card cost me about a week ago.  Seems quite reasonable to me.  I might have bought one when I bought my new Canon PowerShot SD850 IS last week if I’d seen it on the shelf.

This is a very cool sounding piece of kit.  Check out www.eye.fi to see for yourself.