Blogging with a Blackberry

We want to travel light, and not worry about carrying a laptop computer, so I researched some new "smart phones," including the Apple iPhone and IPod touch, as well as the Samsung Sage and several models of Blackberries.

I settled on the Blackberry Bold 9000 for several reasons:

1. It can work with an external keyboard via Bluetooth, so I'll be able to touch type my journal entries on a normal size keyboard.

2. It has a slot for inserting an external memory card, so I can transfer photos from our digital camera and upload them to a blog.

3. It has WiFi capability so I can connect to the Internet at hotels and cafes with WiFi access.

4. The AT&T data and voice plans use GSM which will allow us to make calls in China and several other Asian countries.

At blackberrygadgets.com I purchased a Freedom Universal Bluetooth Keyboard (folded, on the right)

The Freedom Universal Keyboard folds open and provides a slide-out tray for supporting the Blackberry.

This is our Panasonic Lumix DMC-FC3 digital camera (several years old now) that works great. The features we like are the 12X zoom with image stabilization and the fact that image sizes are not huge (about 1.4MB JPG).

While the Lumix camera uses a standard SD card, we purchased a new 2GB micro SD card (a 4GB SDHC card will NOT work) and an adapter, so that we can take pictures directly onto the memory card that can be inserted in the Blackberry.