WWDC 08: The ultimate live blogging kit

I'm now en route to San Francisco to cover the Apple WorldwideDevelopers Conference - and, I hope, the launch of the 3G iPhone.

Back in the Old Days, covering launches and keynotes was simple -you watched the performance, maybe wrote a few notes, phoned inyour comments to the office if the magazine was near deadline, thenheaded
off for a drink before formulating your coverage the following day.

But since the advent of liveblogging and video, all is changed,changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born.

Live coverage means having a decent network connection, a notebook,a stills cam, a videocamera and mic. And a lot of energy

Well, this time I'm carrying a totally new set of kit, and like anyself-respecting gadgeteer with a bagful of new toys, I'membarrassingly excited. Here's my list:

- My MacBook Air , because it's so light. And despite what some might say, thebattery life is good - you can easily get 3 hours out of it, evenwith a 3G USB stick constantly connected. At a push it'll make itto 5 hours. Compare that with my previous ultraportable, the DialogFlybook, which struggled to make it past an hour with HSDPA turnedon.

- A Canon FS11 camcorder, which records to SD card and outputs via USB, because Ican't use my old MiniDV camcorder with the FireWire-less Air.

- A battered Nikon D50 because I know the Canon's stills won't be good enough to print inthe magazine

- A Vodafone HDSPA USB stick , although I'm renting an EVDO USB modem in SF because the Vodastick only picks up AT&T GPRS coverage in the US - which isfine at the hotel, but was painfully slow back at the MacBook Airkeynote this January. as hundreds of journos all tried to accessthe same GPRS connection.

- A bunch of software. I'm using the excellent - and free - ScribeFire plugin for Firefox to blog, iMovie 08 for my initial video editing (despite its usability foibles,iMovie is worth because it supports the codec used by the Canon,and because it's so quick to uplod to YouTube), Final Cut Express for deeper video editing, and Garageband for podcasting (but as the Air has no audio input I'm going tohave to record audio to the camera first).

- I also have a great Sandisk 4GB SD card which snaps oped toreveal a built-in USB connection do I don't need a card reader.(Note to self: I'm not going to be able to plug my photos in whenmy USB modem is connected because of the Air's ludicrous singleUSB. D'oh!)

So what do you think? Anything missing? Naturally I also have myPSP to keep me entertained on the flight over. Plus a few episodesof The Wire on my iPhone.

I'll be writing up a few thoughts on what we can expect from thekeynote on the flight over, so check back soon. And, of course,I'll be covering the announcement as it happens... networkspermitting. Oh for a little Wi-Fi.