Some of you may have noticed a strange new blog just started by “Parker Whittle,” a guy so into Microsoft’s i’m initiative that he’s decided to try to stay up for 30 days straight and send as many IMs and e-mail messages as he can using Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail, to help raise money for the causes he supports.

As you might have guessed, Parker is a fictional character—real people need more sleep than that :-) — but his story is a lighthearted way to help raise awareness of the causes you can contribute to by joining the i’m initiative. Parker’s character is based on the passionate people, like many of you, that we’ve already seen embrace this program as a way to help make a difference without even having to open their wallets. And while Parker may not be real, the i’m initiative and the causes it supports are very real, and the money raised by Parker’s talkathon will absolutely count towards the ongoing i’m initiative effort. The i’m initiative has already raised nearly $1.6 million for the social causes that Windows Live customers have chosen to support.

We hope you have fun following the ups and downs of Parker’s story on his blog. This is definitely an unusual campaign, so please do check out the site and let us know what you think.

Oh, and if you haven't joined the i'm initiative yet, just go to http://im.live.com to get started helping out the causes you care about.

Hey, developers and other technically-inclined people!

Windows Live Writer has a technical preview out now, mainly focused on updates to the SDK. It's your chance to try it out and send along your feedback. The cool thing here is you can create plug-ins with hooks that trigger before and after a post is published. Need a cheat sheet? Samples for Twitter and Digg are included.

There are also some new features in Writer, including video publishing, photo editing, .gif and Lightbox support, word count, and some nifty updates to the interface that make Writer easier to use.

You can read more about this release, and download it from Writer Zone, the Windows Live Writer blog.