Now here's a good idea: offer a free set of ready-made blog templates (see Google's Blogger), then make it possible to write, edit, and publish posts from within the ubiquitous Word processor everyone loves to curse. A new toolbar for Word (Windows only) has been released that could help more of the mildly curious get blogging from a position of familiarity.
Aside from the Blogger Settings, there are only three buttons in the toolbar. These allow you to edit an existing post already online at Blogger.com (the last 15 anyway), to save an unpublished draft, and to publish a new post. What's more you can work with more than one Blogger account:
After publishing a dialog box appears to inform you of your success, and helpfully provides a clickable link to your new post online. Happily basic type styles (bold, italic, etc.) and creation of lists via Word's bullet button is supported:
That's not to say it's a perfect solution, as you are limited to posting simple text (although perhaps a reasonable limitation for embryonic bloggers). For example, if you edit an existing post that contains a graphic you will encounter this message:
Blogger for Word does not support images. If this post is republished images will be lost.
Nevertheless ease of use certainly has appeal, and it's a reasonable bet that this tool will become a standard means of contributing to the blogosphere.
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