I am by no means a road warrior, however, I have spent quite a bit of time on the road over the last few years and found a few things to make life a bit easier.
Hardware:
- Light laptop & Tablet combo – If you’re at a conference, you will be walking, a lot. The lighter your gear combo, the better. Personally I travel with an iPad mini and 13” retina MacBook
- Good bag – For a while this was an old (2009ish) conference bag. Now-a-days, its a much lighter Colombia bag.
- Backup Batteries – This one: http://www.newtrent.com/store/external-battery/icarrier-imp120d.html It can charge whilst being charged, and will charge my iDevices about 6 times.
- USB Firewall – https://lockedusb.com/ <- These just started shipping. It’s a little USB ‘condom’ or firewall of sorts. It will allow you to charge at an optimal rate while keeping the data lines disconnected. Basically, it’s a $14 device that will protect your $500 phone and it’s data.
Software
- Little Snitch – This: http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html < It’s a harder-core OSX firewall. Worth every penny and then some.
- Sidestep – This: http://chetansurpur.com/projects/sidestep/ < This will redirect all your system traffic over an SSH tunnel. Useful when on an unsecure wireless connection.
- Blogsy – This: http://blogsyapp.com/ < This has been the most useful iOS app for live blogging during an event.
- Windows Live Writer – For the longer posts
- FaceTime / Skype – For seeing the family
Suggestions? Things I missed? Drop a line in the comments.
A few thoughts on my end –
Hardware:
Blue Yeti – Don’t podcast away from home without it
Software:
Evernote – I take extensive notes in Evernote so I don’t have to worry about platform from which I post.
Hello – iOS app that scans business cards, connects to LinkedIn and Twitter. Great for connecting the dots on the fly.
Now Qs for you:
Does Little Snitch work well without a lot of customization? I don’t want to be stifled by a firewall while on the run.
Why / how do you use Sidestep?
Hello – This might be interesting. I don’t often use LinkedIn anymore, but the twitter connection might be handy.
Little Snitch – So I keep the OSX firewall turned up. Little Snitch lets me watch outbound traffic as well as more detail on what is talking to whom. You can put it into one of two ‘quiet’ modes. 1) “Don’t prompt me and allow connections” and 2) “Don’t prompt me and disallow new connections”
Sidestep – Think of this like a VPN or so. When you’re on an unsecured wireless connection, it’ll pipe all of your traffic through a remote proxy via an SSH tunnel, keeping things encrypted. You can even turn on compression to compensate for some of the crummier wifi connections. Now, you can do all of this with SSH currently. What SideStep brings to the table is the ability to do this automagically when it detects unsecured wifi (where your traffic is like to be snooped anyways).
I’ve been looking into iPad Attachable, but minimal podcasting kit. Haven’t come up with anything I like just yet, however.