Phew... trying to simplify blogging, but it isn't easy. My current solution involved three necessary evils.
First, to avoid the hassles and restrictions (and annoying advertising) of "free" blog hosting, I'm hosting my own using my micro-entrepreneneurial site http://yourimagesafe.com.
Second, I find that I like the extensive features of hosting tools like Blogger, and the fact that Google's massive resources are behind it. Features I like include creating posts from email, the web browser, and from any computer location. There are also lots of options to hold multiple blog types within a single account.
Finally, I wanted the capability to manage my posts offline, as well as to handle the uploading of media content.
The solution I've arrived at is a hybrid of Blogger and Windows LiveWriter, which has some decent reviews and which is free. I wasn't happy with Blogger alone, as there were big hassles changing and reposting potentially dozens of posts - for example, moving a personal post to a business blog or vice-versa. But Blogger did have nifty features, such as allowing my custom expand / contract javascript for my business posts.
I had experimented with other variations including Serendipity, Movabletype, and WordPress but observed that they were either difficult to install, lacked features that I need, were hard to work with, or other shortcomings.
We'll see how the blogging project continues - and hope the platform can be stable for some time to come, as flipping software back and forth is a drain on my time!
