When I have been hearing a lot about Ruby and thinking to give it a try, I searched for a beginners tutorial over Internet. I found a lot. But luckily, I started with the easiest and solid one. It successfully drive me through an exciting way of learning ruby and lift me from installing to a functional "online cookbook" application. The best part of this tutorial was, it teach everything really "step by step" and you have to turn back to a previous step for never. 2 parts of this great tutorial is here -

part-1 : Rolling with Ruby on Rails

part-2 : Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 2

Ok. It’s confirming your successful starting. For the next step, I am listing here some essentials of learning Ruby on Rails.

1. http://tryruby.hobix.com/ : This is an interactive interface for learning Ruby. They said,"Got 15 minutes? Give Ruby a shot right now!".
2. What is ruby on Rails - This is another tutorial from http://www.onlamp.com/ describing amazing features of Ruby on Rails.
3. Four Days on Rails (PDF) : This PDF goes through building a "To-Do List" Application. The steps of building a ruby applications are explained here excellently.
4. http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails : Ruby on Rails Wiki : The community-driven Rails documentation! A place where you will get everything about Ruby on Rails.
5. http://api.rubyonrails.com/ : The details documentation of Rails API.
6. http://rubyforge.org/ and http://raa.ruby-lang.org/index.html: These are the world’s richest  collection of open source ruby project.
7. Seeing is believing : Screencasts of Ruby on Rails application. Makes a programmer interested on Ruby on Rails in just 01 minute.
8. Ajax on Rails : This is the 3rd part of the introducing tutorial. A must read to work with Ajax in Rails framework.

Windows says, "Windows Live Writer Beta is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog". Really that. I have been using it recently and found it as an exclusive tool for blogging. But remember, a blogger can use windows live writer only when his blog is build on an organized blog system like WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type, Community Server, and many other weblog services.

Windows Live focus themselves on five feature of this writer. They are:

1. Compatible with your blog service
2. WYSIWYG editing
3. Rich media publishing
4. Powerful editing features and
5. Offline editing

Ok. Now I am going to tell you what features of this software impressed me most. First I should mention that, before using Windows Live Writer, I have been using WordPress and I was satisfied on It’s editing options. But now, I get the powerful yet easiest application for writing blog and I’m going to stay on it. Here goes my share of the praise:

1. Offline control on everything: It has powerful editor to write/edit blogs, manage my categories etc on offline. So, it’s fast and easy. Only one thing I have to do is, just tell the writer to publish it. Then it will connect to the blog over online and automatically publish it. Moreover, it lets me see the editing post in different views which helps me to visualize how it will look like at online on my installed theme.
2. Working with images is easiest than ever:  I get rid from the terrible duty of uploading and managing images to use them in a blog post by using writer. It lets me use image in a post and edit them just like MS Word. When an image containing post published, it manages everything.
3. More control on Html elements: The web’s WYSIWYG editors are simply nice. But not comparable with writer’s editing facilities. It’s more than a web editor and near about a word processor. It offers smooth and flexible visual building.  
4. Special inserting tools: Writer’s inserting tools are really rich. It can insert and smoothly manage tables, images, videos, maps(from virtual earth), colorize code snippet(need a free plug-in) etc.
5. Rich and free Plug-ins: Though Windows Live Writer is at beta version yet, it has a large number of free plug-ins. They may solve more than a blogger needs. You can get the plug-ins here:

http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?c=0&bt=9&pl=8&st=5

Moreover, who are blogging on hosted version of WordPress, Blogger etc blogging site, they have some limitations of using plug-ins there. Writer may be a great solution for them. It also provides the ping functionality which is very important for promoting a blog.

See more details here: http://get.live.com/en-us/betas/writer_betas

You can download it from here: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/