More Blogs on the Way?

With the announcement that Word 2007 will have built-in blogging support, do you believe this will dramatically increase the amount of blogging activity? It’s not like blogs are slowing down at any point, but how much more of an impact would this have on the blogosphere?

I’ve begun playing around with 3rd party blog editing tools like Qumana and Performancing, but honestly haven’t migrated over to either one of them completely. Too many variations on what to expect from the post when it’s live. For me, saving the the admin link as a favorite to the various blogs I author is just as easy as opening up a separate editor.

But, if I could do everything in Word, that might be the difference to move away from relying on the browser to do the brunt of blog editing. That leads me to two questions:

1. Doesn’t that contradict the move towards online applications?
2. Can I rely on Microsoft to not feel my blog with bloated, ugly code? Joe’s post sure makes it look like they’re doing the right thing here.

It seems to me, maybe even the more logical choice to move this type of functionality into Microsoft’s realm is to integrate it with some new Office Live functionality or OneNote! (which is just what Chris Pratley talks about here)