You might blog from home or an office, but if you take your blogging on the road, how much crap is in your blogging bag?
While the stuff you carry around with you to do your blogging may or may not have much to actually do with your blogging, this week’s blogging challenge is to list the equipment, hardware, and software you need for your computer, laptop, notebook, or cell phone that helps you blog.
In other words:
What is in your blogging bag?
Look around you and describe what the primarily, and secondary, essential computer parts and pieces you need for to take your blogging on the road.
I travel a lot, so in a week or two, after you all have had a chance at this challenge, I will share with you all the crap I lug around with me on the road. We’ll compare blog weight lifting notes. 
This is one of many blogging challenges I offer weekly to help kick your blogging ass. For more challenges, see the Blog Challenge category.
Site Search Tags: blog challenge, blogging challenge, blogging bag, blog bag, laptop, computer, blogging tools, blogging hardware, blogging software, blog tools, travel, traveling blogger, blogger on the road, what do you need to blog
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
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15 Comments
Surprisingly, I only need 3 things:
(a) Internet connection
(b) my laptop
(c) camera, and this is optional!
My blogging bag is very light!
Hardware
1. laptop – for full blown posting, image processing etc
2. laptop charger
3. camera – with additional battery and CF cards
4. camera charger
5. PDA – for quick asides, checking comments etc (secondary)
6. PDA charger (secondary)
7. Wifi locator – very handy for finding access points quickly and without needing to power up the laptop
8. pen & paper
Software – offline
1. Firefox
2. Smart FTP
3. Gimp
4. Autostitch – for creating panoramas
5. Portfolio – for image and file management
6. OpenOffice
7. Google Earth
8. Thunderbird
Software – online
1. WordPress, with a whole host of plugins
2. Google Maps
After lugging this around while on a 3 week hiking trip, I am trying to identify a way to reduce it for my next trip – considering the blog is about travelling I need to ensure I don’t cut corners.
Really light for me:
1. Pen
2. Notebook
3. Camera (when I remember it…)
Then I write it all out once at home!
I only need 2 things on blogging, a computer and an idea stored in a super computer, the brain
Um, you all are forgetting something: power and cables!
Do you travel with USB cables and hubs? Converter/Inverters? WIFI attachments or built-in? There is more in your blogging bag than just these few things.
I have an Australian backpack with a waterproof pocket for power notebooks that I use to pack my 17 inch laptop, adaptor, an extra optical mouse, some cables and wires, my USB thumbdrive, my Olympus camera (occasionally), a few instruction manuals, a cloth to clean my LCD display, a few vitamins, pen and paper, my headphones, cell phone, MP3 Player/Voice Recorder, and an 8 x 10 photo of Jessica Alba.
If anyone’s interested in the backpack I use they’re called STM, and you can find more info here: http://www.stmbags.com.au/backpacks
Best backpacks I’ve ever used.
Blogging on the go is really simple in my world. I need one main tool: my cell phone. Accompanying it are it’s cigarette lighter adapter, and ac charger. (And, of course, a signal.)
The built-in 1.3MP camera and voice-recorder allow for me to attach any necessary files to an e-mail that I can fire off to my blog lickety-split through MMS or the email application on my phone.
Just my laptop and my GPRS modem so I can blog on the train! If the battery runs out, I urrr… don’t blog till I reach home.
The Port-a-puter for the roadless warrior
Just a laptop,a datacard and a charger.
Laptop (with charger brick) and cell phone (with charger as well). There’s really no need for anything more. The laptop has WiFi and bluetooth built in, and with the bluetooth to connect to the internet using the cell phone, there’s no problem, you’re connected from anywhere.
I highly recommend the LG-CU500 phone for bloggers on the go. It’s a bloggers dream. Having a 2MP camera, there’s no real need for a separate one for moblogging. Also, it can connect via bluetooth or cable to any laptop and it *can* access the internet this way. The AT&T unlimited internet access is only $20 a month for this phone. It’s 3G, so it’s reasonably fast, it supports Java and things like Google Maps and GMail java apps work perfectly. The built in web browser works well (and works with the handheld profiles, so you always get the right format of sites that are designed for handheld styles). Opera mini works on it too. It only has one annoyance for the Java apps, but that can be fixed (aka “hacked”) with a data cable and reading some minor instructions. Basically, it’ll do everything you ever need, without actually being a blackberry or some larger phone.
Oh, and with a service signup, the LG-CU500 is not only free, but you actually make $100 for taking the thing, after the rebate. See amazon.com for an example.
What takes longest (in decreasing order):
- thinking an article through
- writing/editing
- publishing
Therefore, most useful tools (in decreasing order):
- my head
- pen and paper
- laptop, power, connection
I can live without the last two.
Oh, very good way of describing it, mandarine. I like it.
I’ll be posting my list soon. I carry WAY too much junk and when I wrote this, I had some strange expectation that someone would come up with a one-tool-does-it-all that would lighten my load.
Anyone?
Actually, I can do it with nothing. When I travel, I stay at Marriots. Marriots always have a PC in a shared space and I can blog from there. If I have to, I can bring my camera and USB cable.
Now that’s light!
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