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Amsterdam: Looking for a moblog Swiss Army knife

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Kevin Anderson | 13:06 UK time, Sunday, 10 September 2006

Nokia N93 and keyboardI'm also here in Amsterdam to find some good mobile blogging, podcasting and possibly even kit. At the moment, my right shoulder is very unhappy because I'm carrying an office worth's of kit in my courier bag: My brilliant but aging Nikon CoolPix 995 with a wide-angle adapter, my PowerBook, my Palm Tungsten T3 and too many power adapters. I don't even have a mic or an audio recorder with me, although in a pinch, I could use the PowerBook and , brilliant free, open-source audio editing sofware. But that's really only good if I'm sitting down. And, I don't want to sit down or stand in one place. I want to be able to blog and podcast where the news is at, whether it's a conference in Amsterdam or a street protest in New York.

The word mobile is everywhere here, but it took a little looking through all the of the massive booths to find the Nokia stand. Oddly, I remember that massive Nokia stand at Comdex a few years ago, and it was mobbed with people. Here, I had the Nokia reps all to myself to grill with all kinds of technical questions that most of their customers wouldn't even think to ask.

The Nokia N-Series is a good choice for . It even integrates nicely with Flickr, Blogger and Nokia's oww service. It's got a 3.2 megapixel camera, an MP4 video camera, mini-SD expansion slot and not only 3G but also WiFi capability. That's brilliant. The 3x optical zoom is a big plus as well. I hate digital zoom, especially with low-megapixel cameras. This is a definite step up from the camera phones of a few years ago.

Now, as a journalist, and a long-winded one at that, I wanted to know if I was going to have to T9 my story on a little phone keypad. Nope, Nokia sells a nice size QWERTY bluetooth keyboard. It even has nice action for a foldable keyboard. For me that's probably even better than using those QWERTY thumb keyboards like those on BlackBerry phones.

The only thing that might be a deal killer for me is that the N93 doesn't have a jack for an external mic. That's too bad. I know that's probably not something that most people need, but you just can't get broadcast quality audio using the built-in mic on a camera phone.

Hey Pods and Blogs mobloggers, what do you use to moblog? Any suggestions? What blogging services work best when moblogging?

UPDATE: I'm going to second Kevin's post because I'm sick and tired of lugging round a big laptop and the audio gear...soon I'll look like Arnold Schwarzenegger's right side fused with Woody Allen's left. There must be a light weight kit combination out there I'm missing. Thoughts anyone?

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