The latest release of Web-based blogging tool WordPress.com went live to all the WordPress.com users today morning at 8 am (IST). WordPress 2.7 will be released to the self-hosted WordPress.org users  later this month.

In  version 2.7 the whole dashboard interface has been changed. The navigation elements have been moved from the top of the page to the left side of the screen.

you’re able to minimize the new menu bar completely, giving you the entire browser window to compose a post and tweak various options. When minimized you can still get at the features though, as hovering over the edge of the menu item will pop it out, letting you quickly change an option without bringing the bar back out.

Another noteworthy addition is "QuickPress," which lets you write and publish a new post right from the dashboard without having to click New Post.

The new design has made navigation easier and faster. The whole list of features can be found here.

Today at 9:25Pm IST today, the download counter at WordPress touched the 3 million mark. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform and it is no surprise that it has crossed the 3,000,000 mark. Congratulation to the WordPress team.

Appropriate isn’t it.

Pirate Bay is expanding – First there was image hosting (uncensored), YouTube competitor is in track and now BayWords (blogging uncensored).

Brokep, one of the co-founders of the site, told TorrentFreak that the idea to start a blogging service came up when the weblog of one of his friends was taken down from WordPress recently, for linking to copyrighted material. With BayWords you can blog to your heart’s content about anything even uncomfortable thoughts and ideas & copyrighted material too. Read more about it here.

JustBlogIt allows you to easily  right-click post to a weblog. You can you use custom settings and add any weblog. JustBlogIt supports Blogger, Drupal, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Radio Userland, TextPattern, TypePad, WordPress, journalspace, b2evolution and BLOG:CMS. And you can add any weblog type you want through the Custom… setting. JustBlogIt supports seamless posting from within many web-based News Readers. JustBlogIt checks to see if you are trying to post from a News Reader and adapts the blogging data accordingly. JustBlogIt also recognizes Bloglines, Rojo, Radio Userland and Amphetadesk news readers.

You can get the latest version (beta) here or the stable release here.

This a a must have for every blogger. Believe me this is a great piece of software for blogging. Lot of blogs have touched on this subject before but I couldn’t help writing about it cause its productivity and simplicity are great.

Windows Live Writer is currently compatible with:

• Windows Live Spaces
• Blogger
• LiveJournal
• TypePad
• WordPress
• All blogs that support RSD (Really Simple Discoverability)
• MetaWeblog API
• Moveable Type API
• Community Server
• PBlogs.gr
• JournalHome

It includes a WSYIWYG blog editor as well as tools for publishing photos, maps. You can write in normal, web layout or HTML code and see how it is going to look in your blog with web preview.

Some cool things you can do with Windows Live Writer are –

• Embedding video clips – just drag and drop the video embed codes from YouTube or Google video (you should be in normal view)
• Paste Special ? – Windows Live Writer has an option called “paste special” which allows you to remove all HTML formatting but preserve hyperlinks and images.
• Add Tags to Your WordPress Posts – I did not know about this a week ago. I used to post draft at weblog and add tags. Then I discovered that you can add tags by putting keywords in properties.
• Add more tags - Add technorati, Flickr, LiveJournal, IceRocket, 43 Things, BuzzNet, del.icio.us and option to add more.
• Link Glossary - Here you can store all the links you regularly use in your blog. For example if you regularly link to Google homepage in your blog post, you can include that address in the Link Glossary. 
• Resize Images – You can easily resize image by dragging the pointers near the image corners. Windows Live Writer will maintain a link to your source image for readers who like to view the image in full size.
• You can also insert blog widgets, adsense and other javascript by Switching to the HTML code view (Shift+F11) and insert any scripts or CSS code.
• All your post are also saved in your hard drive-

draft is also saved in your hard drive and the the draft your working on is saved every 3(you can change this) minutes (though this option is not enabled by default). Just go to Tools -> Options -> preference.

There are many colors to suit your mood (this feature would have been better in Windows Live Photos Galary)

I thing I should stop here or I’ll go on writing.