Tools

People need tools for a lot of different things.  A carpenter needs a saw, hammer and sand paper.  A photographer needs a camera and these days, a good photo editing software.  A doctor needs a scalpel and a stethoscope.  A writer needs a good word processing program, a dictionary and a thesaurus.   You get the idea, right?

A couple of tools that I, a blogger {I must admit, I hate that term!}, use are Windows Live Writer and Google Reader. 

I learned about Google Reader from Cheryl.  I can add different blog subscriptions in and it keeps track of what posts are new, what posts I’ve read and if I star something, posts I want to refer back to later on.  With Google Reader, I don’t have to keep a list of blogs on my sidebar and I don’t have a long list of blogs to go through to see if they have anything new because Reader tells me when there is something new!  Although, I still have a list of private blogs on in my Favorites thing. 

Mahina told me about Windows Live Writer.  By using it, I can compose and publish posts with out being online.  I can add pictures and make them large or small with out editing HTML.  I can add watermarks to my pictures, and do some basic editing.  I can use different  fonts.  I can see exactly how my post will look once it has been published because I have uploaded my settings to Live Writer. I can easily had video, links, quotes, etc.  

What types of tools do you find yourself using to make life a little easier?