In my quest to make a living of blogging I’ve now turned my attention to my equipment a.k.a my gadgets.

If you didn’t already know that, well I’m working on it. Hopefully in a couple of years I can quit my day job and make a living out of blogging. I think I would be the first Dane to do that.

I’ve compiled a list of gadgets, equipment, skills and programs that I need in order to match the stereotypical blogger.From my interview series I’ve learned that most bloggers have

1. Use a Mac, usually a MacBook Pro, iMac or MacBook Air
2. Keen interest in photography, usually a Canon Digital Rebel XTi or Nikon D40 or similar. Darren Rowse, Matt Mullenweg or Lisa Bettany. They all take great pictures and have a lot of followers on flickr
3. Adobe Photoshop skills. The photographs must be edited in someway. Also great for making graphics for your blog posts
4. Attend a convention. I always envy the bloggers that attend a blogger convention. SXSW is just one of the conventions I would love to participate in. There is so much going on there
5. Speak at a convention.Jennifer Laycock, Guy Kawasaki, Lorelle VanFossen and Andy Beal travel the roads and sky thin speaking at conventions.
6. Have a cool nickname. Robert Scoble is the Scobleizer and Jeremy Schoemaker is Shoemoney. Just to mention a few. I’m sure there are plenty of others out there too
7. Vlog, podcast, lifecast or stream either your life or a daily/weekly show. Justin Kan from justin.tv, Sarah Meyers from Pop17.com, Justine Ezarik from iJustine and Chris Pirillo from LockerGnome all have a show or lifecast (sometimes both). Use services such as Revver, Qik, Ustream, Mogulus or YouTube
8. Say smart, useful and thoughtful things on twitter or pownce
9. Be a part of a Web 2.0 startup

So what kind of stereotypical blogger thing am I doing?

1. I’ve been a pc-guy for many years, but I’ve decided that my next laptop will be a MacBook. (If you have any recommendations then please let me know)
2. I just bought my own Nikon D40. It’s a great camera and a huge upgrade from my old Olympus point and click. The only followers on flickr I have are my parents. I guess the average The Beta News visitor isn’t really interested in pictures of my son with food all his face or our vacation pictures. Who would have guessed! (I do look good in shorts though).
3. Did you notice the graphical improvement after I switched theme. I’m slowly learning to use Photoshop. I just love it, when I find a new feature and figure out how to use it.
4. Attend a convention. Man, I would love to go to a blogger convention. All a part of my big “become a problogger and move to the States”-plan.
5. Being the first Danish problogger that moved to the States. If that doesn’t earn me a spot as a convention speaker. Then what does?
6. Cool nickname. In real life my nickname is Don, but that doesn’t really catch on. I’ve tried with “dennisbp”. Right now I’m trying with my full name: Dennis Bjørn Petersen. Let’s see how many remembers it.
7. I’m experimenting with Qik.com. What a great service. I can stream directly from my cell phone. Besides that I’m trying Camtasia Studio out too. A few of my blog posts will now be recorded using Camtasia Studio. The first one was the prize draw as a part of The Beta News Contest.
8. I try to say smart things on twitter. I’m not as clever as Maki (DoshDosh). He has some really insightful and philosophical tweets.
9. I have no programming skills whatsoever. I do have a couple of great ideas. I just need someone to develop it for me.

Now I’ve revealed my most intimate and secret dreams for you. Which of these points do you follow? Or perhaps you are going your own way and starting your very own trend? What made these people so famous? They were usually first movers or early adopters, some might even call them visionary (not me of course).

UPDATE: I don’t usually ask for diggs, sphinns or stumbles, but as an experiment perhaps you would consider digging or sphinn this?

Phew… Finally some time to blog again. I usually publish a Show Me Your Desktop interview on Sundays, but due to the screen writers’ strike we’ve had delays this season… Ok that’s not true, the cursed work has kept me busy, but now all important projects and presentations are done.

If you missed last week’s interview with Sarah Meyers head over here to read it. Sarah just launched Pop17.com.

This week it’s Duncan Riley’s turn to Show Me Your Desktop. If you Google Duncan Riley a lot of different articles and posts comes up. Many of them are about why he left b5media in 2006. That’s 1½ year ago, so there isn’t anything interesting in that anymore. Instead I’ll focus on what Duncan does now.

He is one of the more controversial bloggers. His posts on TechCrunch often starts a heated debate. This particular debate extended into this blog post on Duncan’s personal blog. I’m still not sure what the Australian government’s plan is, but what I gather it sounds really stupid.

Duncan also hosts a really interesting podcast show on thepodcastnetwork. Here he interviews a very mixed crowd from local Australian web experts to American money makers.

He is also a VERY active twitter. I remember Michael Arrington once told him to Wtwit less and write more.”

And now on with the interview.

What is your background picture?

The Apple store in San Francisco I took in July 2007.

Why did you chose that picture?

It seemed appropriate for my Mac Pro. The picture itself has the Apple logo on the store nearly dead middle

If you have a personal and a work computer, which program do you use the most on your personal computer?

I have two computers. A Mac Pro at home, and a Macbook Pro (17″) for when I’m on the road. As I work for myself there’s no personal or work computer as such.

Twitteriffic would get the best work out on both computers, aside from the browser and Mac Mail.

Internet Explorer or Firefox?

Until days ago I would have said Flock. It’s a great browser that in my experience at least is less of a memory hog than FF2 was. I’m now using the latest beta of Firefox 3. The first beta still had memory issues, but as of beta 2 it’s a pleasure to use, and it’s very memory efficient (even more so than Flock). It looks like Mozilla has finally fixed the memory leaks that ruined Firefox 2.Why do you use Fireox?

I was a windows user until nearly 12 months ago, and even then I used Firefox over Internet Explorer. I’m a heavy tab user and Firefox has done tabs from pretty close to the beginning. IE 7 is a vastly improved browser over IE6, but by that stage, like a lot of people, I’d switched to Firefox and had no interest in going back.

What is your favourite program?

Skitch. Being able to do 95% (perhaps more) of my image editing tasks super quickly and without having to open Photoshop has been a blessing for me, and it’s made me far more efficient in my day to day workWhich program is the worst?

Cyberduck, but to be fair FTP on a Mac just never seems to be as smooth for me using any program as compared to Windows.

Do you have any tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your computer or blog?

You need to have the right tools so that your focus is on blogging, not fighting with the software you have installed. Switching to Apple products was the best move I’ve ever made, I no longer worry about whether my operating system is getting a virus, or needs maintaining…or anything really. Macs just work.

In terms of other tools look for products that make your blogging easier. I use Skitch for basic image editing, Grammarian for US English grammar and spell check, iMovie to mix videos and Garage Band to mix podcasts. All make my life a lot easier and I think my work is better for using them. If you’re blogging for yourself, there’s a range of desktop blogging tools available as well, unfortunately for me the quirks of my main writing gig at the moment for TechCrunch means that I have to use WordPress directly, but presuming you don’t have a similar issue, use a blogging client.

Last tip: multiple monitors are a god send. I have twin 22″ monitors, on my left monitor I run Twitteriffic and Firefox, on the right monitor mail, Skitch and any other program I may want to run. This allows you to have a document or email open and visible at the same time you have access to your browser (or blogging client), negating the need to switch between windows when writing a blog post. You can go for one bigger monitor, but cost wise 22″ monitors in Australia at least are down to around the $300 mark ($275 US), much cheaper than say one 30″ at $1500-$2000, and ultimately you get more desktop with the twin monitors. Some suggest 3 works better again, but in my case I’d need a bigger desk first

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Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions Duncan. The dual 22″ monitor made me a bit envious. I’m pretty sure three monitors would be overkill. I’m not sure what the benefit of that would be.

Personally I use two 19″ monitors (one HP and one IBM), but an upgrade to 22″ wouldn’t be too bad.

How many monitors do you use? Which size and brand? And why do you use more than one monitor?

Remember the very popular interview with Guy Kawasaki is still available. Read it and find out why I’m changing my view on Mac.

This week I’m asking Sarah Meyers to Show Me Your Desktop. Sarah Meyers is the producer, writer and host of the daily tech show at PopSnap. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of the alpha version of PopSnap and it looks very promising. On PopSnap she has interviewed people like Richard Branson, Jeff Jarvis and Stephen Baldwin.

Sarah isn’t like any other video journalist. In one video you’ll see her ordering at McDonalds in an Optimus Prime mask. For some reason the McDonalds manager calls the police. In another video she is thrown out of the TechCrunch 06 party. I’m still not sure why.

She also runs several other sites. Her own blog on WordPress, another blog on Tumblr and a new site, Pop17.com, that I’m not sure what is yet. Sarah has a really interesting tip on how to get the most out of your blog. I’ve never heard that before.

Here comes the interview with Sarah Meyers.

What is your background picture?

Rocks. It’s very Zen.

Why did you chose that picture?

Because my work can be stressful. I edit video on my computer and when the machine gets too hot the software crashes.

If you have a personal and a work computer, which program do you use the most on your personal computer?

Safari

Which program do you use the most on your work computer?

Final Cut Pro

Internet Explorer or Firefox?

Firefox on the PC. I usually use Safari

What is your favourite program?

Garage Band

Which program is the worst?

The new iMovie

Mac or Pc and why?

Apple because I’m into new media and making movies on the Apple computer is the way to go. I have used a PC for this and the over all quality goes down. When you look at a video as a windows file you will see what I’m talking about. Windows isn’t compatible with the editing software I use.

Do you have any tips and tricks on how to get the most out of your computer or blog?

This may sound odd, but encourage complaining in the comments on your blog. When you get complainers engage in the conversation or argue with them.

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Thank you very much Sarah! It was very entertaining to research you. I’ve never seen anyone order a fajita wearing an Optimus Prime mask, but as someone commented. The manager probably mistook you for a Decepticon.

Photo by Brian Solis