The Acme Blogger Kit

Glenn
Reynolds is designing the 'Acme Blogger Reporter' kit, for guys who want to
be citizen reporters, just as an intellectual exercise of indicating what they should have. His kit includes a laptop, digital camera and video
editing software. It's a good, capable suite, but somewhat expensive and heavy.
Although good for covering press conferences, hosted events and meetings, it is
less than ideal for events in which the blogger's physical mobility and
inconspicuousness are  essential. For example, I can't imagine myself
carrying a laptop and a long-lens camera around in West Africa, although I admit
that's a somewhat extreme example. An alternative setup, which might be dubbed the "Caveman Blogging Kit" would consist of the following:

• a 4-5 megapixel point and shoot digital camera that will fit in your shirt
  pocket. It should take AA batteries and have some video and sound capture
  capabilities. With a half gig memory card this ought to cost about $400.


• a one gig USB storage key. Cost, about $100, maybe less.


• access to online file storage where you can dump files via FTP. Cost may
  vary. Say $10 a month.

For computers I would live off the land using internet cafes and
coin-operated type arrangements because the real constraint on the road isn't
finding a computer but finding one with a broadband connection. You can download
stuff from the camera onto your USB key via adapters, so that in a pinch all you
need to carry around is the USB key. You can empty the USB onto your domain
subdirectory. This suite is unnecessarily unwieldy for covering conferences and
similar events. You have almost no image processing capability. No video editing
capabilty. But if you can make arrangements with someone at home base to process
the stuff you leave in your online storage, the image editing limitations can be
solved. In fact, there might a small business opportunity in processing
dropped-off images and video.

Update

One of the readers recommends using a Treo
600 for the Cavemen Blogger role. It has a built-in QWERTY keyboard.