The smartpen has a built in microphone and speaker to record and play the audio. It also transfers your ink and audio, via USB, to your Mac or PC. You can then type a word into your PC or Mac, find the word in your handwriting within your uploaded digitized notes, and click on the word with your mouse to playback the audio from your PC/Mac.

You may also have your handwritten transcribed, if your writing is legible, with accessory software.

Finally, you may “Pencast” your notes and audio privately or publicly, that is, share the audio and ink (animated as a flash movie) with anyone.

Check out comments from Chris Nuttal, Financial Times, who says Pulse “has changed my life as a journalist”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d503ecf6-2152-11dd-a0e6-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1srAYQ11ksc

Or visit the City of Sacramento, CA’s Town Hall Meeting Notes, now publicly pencast using Pulse.

http://www.cityofsacramento.org/charter/Town-Hall-Meeting-Notes-Audio.html

–As the CEO and Founder of Livescribe, the inventor of Pulse, and previously the inventor of the LeapFrog LeapPad, I have a fascination with what I have called “paper-based computing” .

I’ve noted a common recommendation in comments by journalists above, of pen and paper as a basic, mandatory, travel tool. Now your smartpen doubles as a digital recorder, while making your basic ink-on-paper intelligent and transferable to the “digital world” (PC/web) for saving, searching and sharing.

Please feel free to check out Pulse at http://www.livescribe.com .

Some other notes: the paper in the Moleskine-like notebooks is plain paper printed with virtually invisible dots. A5, 3×5″ and 8.5×11″ notebooks are also available at standard notebook prices. Further, you can print your own interactive paper for free, with files from Livescribe, using ordinary copy paper on a color, postscript-compatible laser printer.

We are continuously being told that Pulse is changing peoples’ lives. I recommend investigating.

Best regards,

Jim Marggraff

Details of each bit of kit is viewable on Flickr.

Agree with other comments above, carrying kit bags can get tiring, if I want to travel lighter, here’s the order I take stuff in, most essential first:

Notebook & pen
Blackberry Curve (always with me)
Postcards
Sony Alpha dSLR
Zoom H4 (people more comfortable with audio interviews)
Spare batteries
Kodak Zi6
Laptop, card readers and 3G dongle

@simonperry

At a push I would be happy with an iPhone and a handful of free apps.

For a little more freedom and flexibility I would pack an iPhone with mophie Juice pack attached. MiFi with sims. A Spoffle (mic wind shield), Audioboo, tweetie, twitvid and posterous.

In reality I pack way more kit to be ready for every eventuality with Power Gorilla, macbook pro, compact camera, solar chargers, digital audio recorder and so on. Most of this is back-up and never gets used.

Break it down and all we need is a story, the passion to document it and a way of sharing.

The more tech we hang off ourselves the more options we have to decide between and the more cluttered our mind becomes.

If this starts to hinder the journalistic process your tools become a burden.

Moments after bumping into Tony Benn with only an N95 my streamed video was on the Guardian website. If I had asked him to hold on a moment while I rifled through a sack of tech I would have fluffed my chance at an impromptu chat.

Use what you are comfortable with, that you can operate without thinking and maybe pack a spare.

If we’re talking about needs, I’d argue that you really only need everything in Section 4 (Mindset), a laptop, free wi-fi at Starbucks, a Twitter account and the gold Nokia brick.

That said, these lists are dynamite “next generation” upgrades once you’ve grown accustomed to the basics.