Over the last few years I’ve really come to enjoy blogging from the road. Whether going to a professional conference, on vacation, or a skate-related road trip, it’s fun to go on the road and do some writing and multimedia stuff to share while the memories are still nice and fresh.

My mobile blogging setup, as it existed a few years ago. Nicely upgraded now with new digital camera and Sony Bloggie.

I also love it that you can fit a mobile multimedia blogging studio in a backpack now, with room to spare for some snacks, a book or two, an extra set of wheels, extra bearings, and maybe a change of underwear. As equipment gets more compact and less expensive, you can go anywhere and produce some great content.

Now, in these days of smart phones, iPhones, and iPads, it is entirely possible you could do some good blogging from the road with just a mobile device. If that device can shoot movies and video, well, cool, go for it! I must confess, I haven’t taken the dive into the whole mobile world yet, though I do use a cheap cell phone. I had an iPod Touch, but I washed it in the pocket of some jeans and ruined it. Nice.

So keep in mind in this article that I’m talking about a little more involved blogging — with video, image, and audio editing. It may be that you can do a lot of that on the iPad. At this point, I prefer to capture the pics and images on separate devices, and then work on them using my computer. But there’s certainly nothing wrong with snapping a pic, using your iPhone to upload it to your blog, and posting it from the road.

Computer and Software

The MacBook is the center of my blogging setup. It could be any laptop, but I just happen to like the MacBook. I use the least expensive 13″ MacBook. For my needs as a blogger it is fine, and at 13″ it fits in my backpack quite nicely. Mine is about 4 years old. The new ones are better –more disk space, etc. One feature I really like about the Macbook is the built in camera and microphone. You are not only instantly set up for skyping with the folks back home while you’re on the road, but the mic can come in handy for doing voice-overs on your video or for doing audio podcasts. The quality isn’t fantastic, but not bad either.

When I purchased my MacBook, it came with iPhoto and iMovie HD. I’ve found iMovie HD to be great for editing video content. iPhoto is fine for just looking at pics and whatnot, but it isn’t any good for editing them. For that, I use the inexpensive image editing software Pixelmator. Great application – does everything most people would want it to do. A poor man’s Photoshop. You can get it for less than $50. Killer.

Likewise, when I got my computer it came with GarageBand, which I’ve found very useful for audio editing on podcasts. It isn’t the most intuitive application, but with a little practice it works well.

I keep a couple of other apps on my MacBook for working with audio and video files. Audio Hijack Pro is a great app that will let you capture pretty much any audio, from any source. Very useful. Single User license is $32. I have barely even scratched the surface of what it can do. Thanks to Manton Reece for alerting me to this application on one of his older blog entries about podcasting.

I also keep a copy of Wondershare Video Converter  Pro on my MacBook. This will convert pretty much any format of video or audio into nearly any other format, with lots of size and quality options. Really nice, and also not expensive.

Sometimes you need a good FTP application. A lot of web-based upload systems have a file size limitation. For instance, the web-based FTP system my web hosting company provides limits file size of uploads to about 7 megs. Yeah – not big enough. I use FileZilla, a free FTP app available on the web. It works very well.

Now, sometimes you may want to work on a blog post at at time you aren’t able to access WiFi or plug into the net. This has happened to me a few times. You can always write your post in a simple editor, like Notepad for the PC or TextEdit for the Mac. If you want a nicer solution check out MarsEdit, an application designed to interface with all the popular blogging systems. You can write the post, insert images, etc, and then upload the whole thing when you finally get access to the internet.

That’s about it for software. As you can see, I didn’t have to add a lot of software to my computer, and there were really nice and inexpensive options when I did need to add something.

Other Hardware

Critical– Inexpensive point ‘n’ shoot camera: We’re talking about blogging from the road here, not producing a masterpiece of cinematography. Luckily, the average cheap digital camera will not only take fantastic pics, but will shoot really nice video as well.  I use a Canon SD1300 these days, since my beloved SD750 died. Any similar camera will do. Some of the newer ones can take HD video. How awesome is that? make sure you have a nice big SD card. I use a 4 Gig card. If I thought my little camera could handle more I’d get an 8 Gig.  I actually have a pretty nice little Sony Mini-DV camcorder with a wide angle lens. It shoots nice video, but I usually end up just using this little camera because it’s so convenient just to have it in my pocket.

Nice to have — Pocket Camcorder: As I wrote on my Texas Longboarder blog, I was impressed with my friend’s Kodak Zi8 pocket camcoder. I’ve also been able to play with a Flip camera at work quite a bit. So I recently acquired a Sony Bloggie. I chose this model with the rotating lens specifically for shooting skateboarding (you need weird angles sometimes), but any of these little devices are work great these days. They shoot HD video, fit in your pocket, are simple to operated, and they are inexpensive. Around $100 – $130. Technically, you can get by with just a good point ‘n’ shoot camera. I decided to try this out specifically because of my interest in skateboarding videography.

Also really nice to have — Mobile battery charger for your camera: I can’t count the number of times I’ve been out on the road and realized my camera was low on juice. Last time I took a road trip, I stopped at Target and bought one of these, a Duracell “universal” charger for camera batteries that plugs into your car’s cigarette lighter. Problem solved.

Recap

So, here’s a recap of the stuff I like to have for my blogging activities, especially on the road.

Hardware

• Laptop: preferably a MacBook
• Inexpensive point ‘n’ shoot digital camera
• Pocket HD camcorder
• extra storage media – SD cards or whatever
• Charger cables for everything
• Any USB  or other connector cables you need
• Mobile charger for your camera battery
• Cell phone – for keeping up with your mates on route to skate sessions.
• You might want a good microphone that you can use with your cameras or computer.

Software

• Video Editing – iMovie HD or Final Cut Express, or similar application.
• Sound Editing: Garage Band. Not sure what to use on the PC.
• Image Editing: Pixelmator
• Sound Capture: Audio Hijack Pro
• Video conversion: Wondershare Video Converter Pro
• Text/Blog editing: TextEdit, or MarsEdit.
• iTunes: if you want to steal some of your music to edit into video

This entry was posted on February 12, 2011 at 12:36 am and is filed under blogging, photo journals, podcasting.

Tags: blogging, blogs, multimedia blogs