Mr Coates touches on how tools have affected his writing online:

"...it has at times felt like posting had ceased to be a pleasure and was becoming a chore. I don't know why that might be - possibly it's a result of Movable Type's posting interface interface, the obvious practical utility and web-native aspects of the post-per-page format or maybe it's just because of my own determination to bore the world slowly to death."

I also give a big "+1" to his comments about Flickr - it makes publishing pictures so easy that I'm encouraged to do it more (and of course, the more time I invest in getting my stuff online with Flickr, the more likely I am to start paying for it), particularly with the iPhoto plugin for chucking them out of my PowerBook, and an MMS/email gateway we've recently built for getting pics straight from handsets (very easily).

Along similar lines, Brent has written up some of his thinking behind the excellent MarsEdit user interface here, but the interesting point for me was when he said:

"...the value of having an email-like user interface is not just that it’s easy-to-learn—it’s that it helps people get into a more email-like frame of mind, where they’re more likely to be relaxed, less pressured to Write Something Good."

This was always my complaint about MovableType - it's an excellent piece of software, but the interface and default templates seem oriented more towards posting essays than throwing scraps of thought online - and I'm definitely more a chuck-it-up than craft-a-post guy. But things like the XMLRPC API mean I can choose an alternative interface... so when do we start seeing weblogging tools which, rather than attempting to be The Best Weblog Posting Program, are targeted at specific audiences. How would a tool for LiveJournallers different from one for Bloggers or Wordpressers? And is anyone thinking about what different types of writer want?