Check your blog’s capabilities

Live Writer has a very useful option to check your blog’s capabilities.

From the menu, select Blog -> Edit blog settings and select Accounts (you might need to select your blog firs from the Blogs menu, if you’re managing multiple blog accounts). Then click on the View capabilities link.

Depending on the blog, some options may not be available and some of the tips may not be applicable. But if you’ve a WordPress blog, most of the options will be available.

Enable the auto save option

By default this feature is disabled. Enable this and even if there is a system crash you can recover the content (just like MS Word).

From the menu, select Tools -> Options select Editing and enable the option

Enable the auto remind option for titles, category and tags

Enable this option so that you won’t publish an article accidentally without entering titles or selecting category.

From the menu, select Tools -> Options select Preferences and enable the options

Enable the check spelling before publishing option

It is recommended to have spelling check enabled before publishing your content. This will ensure that there is no accidental spelling mistakes.

From the menu, select Tools -> Options select Spelling and enable the option

Can copy paste Video embed code directly to the editor

You don’t need to go to source code view or select Video insert option to embed a video. You can directly copy paste the embed code in the GUI editor. It is smart enough to understand the clipboard content.

Can copy paste images from clipboard

Images can be added from clipboard. For e.g.: you can use, the Windows snipping tool to capture part of screen and directly paste it to the editor – no need to save as a file (If you want better control over file names, it is recommended to save the image first as a file)

Make sure XHTML is selected

Make sure, XHTML mode is selected for better code generation.

From the menu, select Blogs -> Edit blog settings and select Advanced

Pictures can be uploaded to a specific folder or another server using FTP

Images can be uploaded to the blog in normal way (For e.g.: in WordPress, it will be organized by year and month) or you can upload it to another or same server using FTP. This way you can keep all your images in the same folder. (Not recommended for WordPress as it organizes the images in a good way)

From the menu, select Blogs -> Edit blog settings and select Pictures

Can save the post as a draft in blog and it can be accessed from anywhere

If you’ve drafted a post in one computer and want to continue editing in another computer, instead of saving the post as a local draft you can save the post as a draft in the blog. In this way, you can access this draft from anywhere.

Add ping servers

You can add ping servers so that whenever you publish a post, these servers will be notified and can re-index your blog.

From the menu, select Tools -> Options -> Ping Servers and enable the option

Following is a good collection of ping servers. Copy and paste to the text area.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Make good use of the split post functionality

Split post functionality is useful if you don’t want to show the full post content in home page. You can split the post and only the first part will be shown in home page (This is different from excerpt). Please note that, this may not be supported in all blogs.

After the desired portion of content, click on the split post icon in toolbar.

Make good use of the Auto Linking feature

Live Writer has a good option to insert links automatically to  certain words and phrases. For e.g.: if you want to link to the YouTube video site automatically when you write YouTube, it can be set in the Auto Linking. It is better to limit it to happen only for the first occurrence.

Make good use of the Paste Special feature

If you’ve copy pasted contents from MS Word, you might’ve seen that it produces lots of inline style tags which may affect the layout of your blog or cause HTML validation errors.

Live Writer has a nice feature to avoid this – Paste Special. Using this, we can either remove all tags or just remove special tags.

After copying the content, from the menu, select Edit -> Paste special (Ctrl+Shift +V)

Change default image sizes and image style to match your blog

Live Writer supports automatic resizing and styling of images. The image border option is an excellent feature. It has support for shadow, rounded corners, reflection etc. You can add some effects like Sepia, black & white etc or adjust brightness and contrast.  A copyright watermark can also be added.

For image resize you can set 3 options. You can change this according to your blog. For e.g.: set the size of  “small” to the thumbnail size in your blog, “medium” to the full width of the main content area.

Select the image and you’ll get the image options in right sidebar.

Enhance features with Plug-in

One good feature of Live Writer is the ability to support plugins. The functionality can always be expanded with plug-ins. There are already some good plugins available (I will do a separate post on plugins).

Some useful shortcuts

Publish to blog – ctrl + shift + P
Paste special – ctrl + shift + V
Categories - ctrl + shift + C
Edit view – F11
Preview - F12
Source view - Shift + F11
Toggle edit using theme – ctrl + F11
Insert hyperlink – ctrl + K
Insert image - ctrl + L
Check spelling – F7

Related posts:

1. Windows Live Writer – Surprisingly good!

Naturally, this will also become a direct comparison of both search engines feature wise. So you may consider this as a “Bing Vs Google” comparison.

The following options are supported by both Bing and Google. But in some, for example currency conversion and unit conversion, Google is more advanced.

• Limiting search
• Calculator
• Currency conversion
• Unit conversion
• Weather
• Search for files

The following only applies to Google now. Bing may support these in the future.

• Find definitions
• Find local time
• Find movie information
• Specify a range of numbers
• Quick information about a site
• Cached copy of a site
• Related sites

Limiting search

site:domain <search term>

This will search only in the specified domain. The ‘search term’ is optional. If omitted, this will bring all the indexed pages in that domain.

Eg: site:microsoft.com live writer will show results only from microsoft.com

inurl:part of url <search term>

This will show results from the pages which has a similar url.

Bing does not support this.

intitle

This will show results from the pages which has similar title

Bing does not support this.

Calculator

You can use google & bing as a calculator. Just type in the expression and search.

For eg: 13 * 12 + (1/2000)

Other supported operators

% of             percentage of      
^ or **         raise to a power
sqrt              square root of

Currency Conversion

You can use google and bing for currency conversion. The syntax can be any of the following.

<amount> <from_currency_code> to or in<to_currency_code>

Eg: 100 USD to INR, 100 USD in INR etc

<amount> <from_currency_name> to or in<to_currency_name>

Eg: 100 Us dollars to indian rupees

You can also mix currency code & currency name.

For eg: 100 INR in Us dollars

But what if you don’t know the currency code or currency name? Google supports another very useful syntax.

<amount> <country_name1> money in <country_name2> money

Eg: 100 british money in indian money

Note: Bing does not support this.

Unit conversion

If you want to convert one unit into another you can use Bing or Google.

Eg: 100 Kg in mg or mile in km etc

Number system conversions

google supports number system conversions but Bing doesn’t.
Prefix the following to number to convert from one number system to another.

No prefix means decimal (Eg: 100 in hex)
0b = binary ( Eg: 0b100 in decimal)
0x = hex (Eg: 0×100 in binary)
0o = octal (Eg: 0b100 in hex)

Weather

You can find out the weather forecast from both Google and Bing using the following query.

weather city_name

Eg: weather trivandrum

Searching for a specific file type

You can search for a specific file type by adding the following to the search term.

filetype:<extension>

eg: iphone manual filetype:pdf – It will only show links to matching pdfs.

Following are some Google only tricks. These do not work in Bing. Probably Microsoft will add these search options to Bing as well.

Find definitions

You can get the definitions for a word or phrase by the following.

define:<word> (If the ‘:’ is omitted it will show only one definition and then list the normal results. If clicked on that result you can see all the definitions).

Find local time

You can find the time of a city or country by the following query.

time <city name or country>

Eg: time new delhi, time india, time russia.

If a country has more than one time zone, it will list all.

Movie information

If you want quick information about a movie, use the following

movie: movie_name

Eg: movie: the ring

Specify a range of numbers (The .. operator)

This is useful if you want to search pages created in a specific period or a product with a specific price range.

Eg: mobile phones $500..$700

Information about a site

If you need a quick information about a site, you can try

info:<domain_name>

Eg: info:apple.com, info:cnet.com

Cached copy of a site

cache:<domain>

Eg: cache:cnet.com

Related Sites

If you want to bring out related sites – similar content or category you can try this.

related:domain

Eg: related:cnet.com

Bing Vs Google

It was not my intention to do a comparison when I started writing this post. But after finding a lot of Google only options I am forced to write the following.

Though Bing is a good alternative to Google, it is not a complete replacement. If you want more power over your search, still Google is the best. If you check the above search options, you might have already noted that, Google supports a lot of options that Bing does not support. But, Bing may evolve and will add more features under its hood – but until then, Google is the best choice for me.  For image and video search I might be tempted to use Bing.

Related posts:

1. Bing – is it a google killer?
2. MSN Search improved a lot!
3. Google Earth!

Mac4Lin, a popular tool used to give mac style look to Linux desktop is now updated to 1.0. It consists of all the skins, icons, themes and other graphics which can give your linux desktop a mac look. It is the easiest way because it can automate most of the skin changes including login window, window look & feel, buttons, customized awn/cairo dock etc.

These are the changes from previous versions as described by the author. You can also find more screenshots on his blog

* Fully supports GNOME 2.26 and backwards compatible
* Improved support for GlobalMenu, support integrated in the default GTK theme
* Better native Xfce support
* Icon additions
* Statusbar is now fixed
* New progress bars
* New tabs
* Improved installation and uninstallation scripts
* Integrates well with Globus
* Finer UI refinements
* Metacity theme now supports different button sizes
* Firefox 3 themes are now updated
* Songbird plugins included
* Pidgin AWN 64bit plugin now included
* Fonts are now consolidated
* Transparent top panel
* GDM theme is now in-line with Mac OS X login window
* Cairo dock is the default recommended dock

You can download the package from Sourceforge

If you don’t want Mac4Lin and need a step by step guide for more control, you can check the below link. It is written particulary for Ubuntu hardy, but should work in Ubuntu 9.04 as well.

http://maketecheasier.com/turn-your-ubuntu-hardy-to-mac-osx-leopard/2008/07/23

Note: As I mentioned in another post, these tools are experimental and not very stable. If you want a stable Linux, you would better stay away from these. But if you want to experiment and want some eye candy, experiment it. It is cool

Related posts:

1. Desktop Enhancement Tools
2. Desktop Enhancement Tools
3. Windows, Linux and Mac – A comparison