We’ve been putting our new site, socialspark through its paces in an Alpha Test lately. Unlike PayPerPost, socialspark is a completely open, transparent system that addresses all our opponents criticisms. socialspark adds required nofollow on all links in sponsored posts, and also brings to the table a full and incredibly powerful set of analytics tools, fantastic campaign management for advertisers, and new options for bloggers including sponsorships (a more traditional form of web advertising, but done really elegantly), and sparks.
Sparks are free opportunities, a way to encourage a conversation in the blogosphere and the post you’re reading now is really the result of a spark. Anyone can create a spark asking bloggers to write about anything (within reason), and anyone can ‘take’ a spark and add to the ongoing conversation.
One of the sparks in our test was to tell the world the gear you use to blog. Technology obsessed as I am, that subject instantly jumped out at me and I had to join the game.
When I joined Izea a couple of years back, I completely switched from PC’s to Macs and loved it. Recently though I felt a yearning to go back to Windows. It has a toolset I’m more familiar with, more variety of applications to get things done, and of course I can game more on a PC than I can on a Mac. More to the point, our investors and many of the financial peeps involved with the company spend their entire days locked inside Excel spreadsheets, and PC’s are just better at working with Excel.
So, today my kit consists of a single computer for everything (work, games, writing, blogging, surfing - you name it). I exclusively use a Sager NP5793 monster of a notebook. It’s loaded to the brim with memory, disk space and state of the art Penryn processors, plus a GeForce 8800GTX graphics card that smokes any desktop I have access to (although, of course, I know there are plenty of desktops out there that could smoke me right back).
For connectivity, most of the time I rely on the notebook’s built in wireless card, but when I always carry a USB cable with me for those times where wireless connectivity is just not available. In those times I simply plug the cable into my Blackberry and go online at near broadband speeds that way.
In terms of cameras, I don’t carry a camera too much these days, and recently my oldest decided to drop my pocket camera and wreck it, leaving me completely digital camera less. You never realize just how much you use a digital camera, rely on it even, until you no longer have one, so a few weeks back I bit the bullet and replaced my broken shutterbox with a very cool Nikon D40 SLR - and it rocks.
I guess the only other gadgets that may interest you lot are the input devices I use. I have carpal tunnel problems, the result of typing on bad keyboards and using crappy mice since I was 11 years old (27 years ago). Now, when I’m sat at a desk at the office or at home, I use Microsoft ergonomic keyboards and Logitech trackballs. At work I use a Logitech Trackman Wheel, while at home I use a Logitech Cordless Trackman Optical (it’s a sturdier trackball, and much better for gaming).
So, that’s my gear.
PS. Some muppets out there have attacked the company in the past for spending (which, if you spent any time here at all, you’d know is just insane - this is one of the most frugal companies I’ve ever worked at), so I just want to point out that every single piece of kit above was bought and paid for by me, and I returned my company laptop for someone else to use, saving the company even more money. So take that Arrington.