An iphone
voice recorder software on the iphone (and I spent monday writing all my notes at a 8 hour meeting on it. It worked surprisingly well)
twitterific on the iphone - useful to see who is twittering near your location on a story

Nikon P5000 10 mega pixel digital camera - why this one?: good grip, full manual control, shoots quite good video and with a 4 Gb SD card, you can record 10-16 hours of voice if required (or 2 hours of video, cards are cheap as well).

Notepad, three pens ( you can never have enough pens)

Bag large enough to pick up reports that are available at the meetings I go to.

This is half the stuff I was carrying even a year ago. I would have never of thought of using the digital camera for news if it wasn’t for a visit to CERN and the Large hadron collider last year. Shot some video as an experiment and the quality was decent enough to post to the web site.

Optional: macBook Pro (one of the old ones so its a bit slow and temperamental)
Canon HC-V20 digital camcorder
Stool - you’ll be amazed how useful a portable stool can be sometimes.

Important to note though: Remember to never bring any knife into a courthouse, no matter how innocently small it seems.

Laptop
Plenty of pens and pencils
One large and one small notebook
digital recorder
Ipod
iPhone
USB drives
A bundle of cables
At least one magazine (for downtime)
A knife (for opening CDs and DVDs)

I used to carry a utilitarian Dickies bag that more than enough pockets, but I traded it in for a sleeker Adidas flight bag, which fits in better with the Hollywood types. Also because I never know when I’ll be on camera, I keep a separate bag that has:

Toothbrush
Tooth paste
Deodorant
Lint roller
Chapstick
Business shoes (you never know)

Inside:

A fold-out Bluetooth keyboard for my T-Mobile Dash, used for Twittering life events and filing stories.

A Canon HV20 high-definition video camera with extra batteries.

A video camera bracket (I bought from a big box electronics store for $12) that connects to the tripod mount and can be used add the shotgun mic (which sticks out over the lense if you mount it on top of the camera) or a wireless kit.

Sometimes, there’s a wireless lavalier mic kit.

An Edirol09 mp3 recorder.

A homemade adapter I can use to connect the miniplug from the AV input on the HV 20 into professional XLR and BNC connector for professional TV cameras, so I can plug into the court pool video.

An adapter to go from an XLR on the shotgun microphone to the miniplug on the Canon and/or the Edirol.

Extra batteries in the front pockets, business cards, and a cheat sheet on the specs for compressing video for our web site.

Video tapes

Firewire cable for downloading video.

Headphones

Ponytail holders (not for me, but they’re great to keep cords from tangling).

Outside in the pockets:

A legal pad.

Business cards

Pens

An Azden shotgun microphone.

(I also keep a tripod in the car, but I’m trying to figure out a way to carry that with me; photogs tell me to just get a suitcase strap and sling it over the other shoulder).

My “backpack” size changes on what I think I’ll need for the day.

Always take with:
* Notebooks
* Pens of various colors (running low actually)
* m515 Palm Pilot
* Olympus DS 40 recorder, headphones, wired lav mic and a USB cable for the recorder, extra batteries
* Business cards
* USB drives of various sizes (1gb to 8gb)
* Cell phone

Sometimes take with (Depending on the day)
* Asus F3F laptop (I don’t always take this to work)
* Canon HV30 video camera (getting used to using this, but just in case, don’t always take this to work either)

At the office:
* Sunblock, pain killer, relaxing tea, iRiver music device with calming music to write to so I can drown out office noise

There’s also a tripod in the car. And by reading this I realize I’m almost out of hair ties.

@Kiyoshi: I have a Tide pen in my desk at work, where I also have two other types of hand sanitizer. ;) You’re also more thoughtful about cords, batteries and change. (We don’t have more than a handful of parking meters here, we just have a lot of one-hour parking.) I should keep batteries around, and I actually do keep my camera cable around.

@Cory: I keep a hair tie on both wrists every day, so that’s a given. My hair is halfway down my back long, and you’re right in rain storms or windy days as are common here, sometimes it needs to be pulled back. Re: Umbrella, I feel silly in rain jackets, and have gotten pretty good at holding the umbrella and the notebook in one hand. That said, a huge downpour this may not be so practical. Extra shoes is a good idea, too.

Although it’s been a couple of years for me, I always carried a rain jacket for tornado/storm coverage, as I found that taking notes while holding an umbrella didn’t always work that well;

A spare set of shoes for traversing those rural fields in western Pennsylvania.

And, for those that might need it, I had a hair tie with me at all times. :)

Some other things I carried:

+ USB cable. You never know when you need one. I found this works w/ a lot of digital cameras, recorders, portable harddrives and my BlackBerry (bonus for being able to use the BB as a tethered modem for the laptop w/ it).

+ Flash Drive. I find use for it from time to time, although you won’t need this if you have other USB storage devices.

+ Audio cable. This was useful for plugging into audio boxes at press conferences and feeding the audio directly into my recorder.

+ Spare batteries. This has saved me and a few friend reporters from on several occassions.

+ Spare change. Because there’s always a meter to feed.

in my bag today (and in most days):

- my phone (nothing fancy, just a normal phone);
- notebook for taking notes + moleskine for other ideas (yep, like you);
- digital voice recorder;
- usb flash drive (i brought two with me today but i usually only carry one);
-loads of pens (I really should get a case for them but right now they’re just all over my bag)
- business cards (mine and other people - the day will come when I’ll make the mistake of giving out someone else’s business card instead of mine. I really should get organised on this too);
- my diary
- a book
- an umbrella

There’s other stuff I carry with me sometimes but these are the absolute basics. Like you, I only take the laptop with me when I know I’m going to need it (e.g. conferences where I’ll have time to write stories, etc).

Cheers! :)