As I mentioned in my earlier blog – Do iPad or Do I Kindle? – the iPad delivers something very specific for authors that ereaders don’t…

- quite simply, it’s the ability to write.

Will I be getting one? You bet!

Will I wait a while? Yes too as I specifically want it do act as my mobile writing toolbox and want 3G.

Also the apps, I need aren’t quite yet available in iPad format.

So apart from the obvious ability to write, here’s what I plan to use it for and my app shopping list for developers to step up to the plate with …

… some of which I know are ‘appening

Killer app #001 : Mind Mapping

The iPad will be brilliant for being able to brainstorm and plan. If I currently Mind Map with clients I use pen and paper as a laptop creates an uncomfortable barrier. Having an iPad will sort that once & for all.

For authors, Mind Mapping is brilliant for not only coming up with initial concepts but also project management of the whole book production process.

Apps on my shopping list:

• iMindmap
• iThoughts
• Mind Manager

Killer app #002 : Audio recording

I encourage many of my clients (especially those that have dyslexic tendencies) to use audio recording as a means of “writing” their books. Transcription to text can either be semi-automatic or done cheaply through a number of human-based services.

Apps on my shopping list:

• Griffin iTalk
• Voxie ProRecorder
• Dragon Dictation

Killer app #003 : Research

It might sound obvious but a real bonus is being able to search without opening up a laptop and on a bigger screen than your iPhone.

Apps on my shopping list:

• Taptu
• QuickFind
• Early Edition RSS Reader

Killer app #004 : e-Publishing

Having Pages on your iPad will allow you to write and edit your book. Imagine though an app that allowed you to publish directly into the iBookstore or on the Kindle or Sony Reader. Well I will make a prediction that either Apple will make ePub an output format for Pages and/or a third party app will come out soon to do exactly that.

Apps on my shopping list:

• Pages (with Save as … ePub)
• Calibre (not available but soon please)

Killer app #005 : Producing your own apps

ePublication into the iBookstore will become as easy as submitting an MP3 file to iTunes within a few months. Publishing of read-only titles will become trivial and publishing will be in the hands of authors.

At the same time, great opportunities will open up to create interactive titles that make full use of the iPad environment.

Take my latest book Blocks which comes with six guided audio visualisations and several Mind Mapping exercises. Imagine listening to the audio at the appropriate point in the book and then opening the Mind Map app up to complete the exercise.

I am currently writing the sequel to Blocks with the iPad in mind as a target platform (as well as print).

Here’s a few more ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

• Embedding live web components
• Embedding tests and surveys
• Tasking and reminders
• Geo-coded based content
• Interaction and chat with the author
• Upselling of products and services

This decade is going to be an amazing time to be an author, a publisher and a reader…

…. Happy Scribing & do add your killer apps below

Incidentally, if you want to know more about all of this, I will be covering all aspects of ePublishing (and more) on my 3 day Author’s Retreat

Details and booking here …

Each of us operates in a three dimensional world. Our sense of up and down, backwards and forwards and left and right is embedded deep in our neurology and something we share with most of the animal kingdom … in evolutionary terms.

This sense must have evolved millions of years ago, probably in sea life that had more need for a 3-D map of the world than us land based creatures.

With the appearance of our conscious minds and our self awareness, a sense of time emerged that was not just linked to the diurnal rising of the Sun and Moon or the seasons. It’s probable that this facility is just a million or so years old. The fact that ancient astronomers could make amazing forward predictions like predicting the precession of the equinoxes means that is must have been fairly advanced by the time we came down from the trees. It’s possible that homo sapiens is alone in having this facility but perhaps a sense of the future, and the past, is something we share with elephants and cetaceans. This is a sense of time not to be confused with your dog simply wanting to go for a walk.

We not only have this sense of time but it appears we map it into our spatial dimensions. If you close your eyes and imagine where your past is, you are likely to say either behind or to the left of you. Or somewhere between, perhaps pointing downwards or upwards too or even in a three dimensional cone. Likewise, most people say that their future is to the front or right of them. Note that other strange spiral or reversed timelines also crop up.

Several therapeutic regression techniques make use of this phenomenon. You can take a person back into their past to help clear current emotional issues relating to past experiences. Psychological trauma also occurs while in the womb. If the therapist is so trained, regression also doesn’t even have to be limited solely to this lifetime.

Likewise, you can take a client into the future, get them to anchor the feeling of achieving a goal or success and then bring them back to the present. This seems to somehow entangle the present with the future and help people reach said goal. Amazing transformations can be made by a skilled practitioner using these techniques.

In my writing workshops and mentoring sessions, I make use of the tendency of the brain to encode time into our spatial awareness when constructing any time-based mind maps.

For example, when an author needs to change their schedule to generate time (or is it space?) to write, we find it useful to put the goals and change in behaviour into the position on the map corresponding with their future and past as seen in their personal time line.

Using our visualisation techniques, the resulting map seems to embed itself into not only the memory, as all maps do, but into the neurology actually encouraging the behavioural change necessary to generate quality writing time.

Other map layouts suit other time based activities. For example, if you are project planning a sequence of milestones, where there is no real emotional context, a clock face map seems easy to commit to memory.

Find out more about Mind Maps, how they work and increase your creativity in my new book, Blocks …

Have you ever had one of those light bulb moments where an idea comes in out of the blue?

It’s the sort of idea that you feel compelled to act on and it can make you drop everything or keep you awake in the early hours. Perhaps you had a vision for a new invention that will make you rich, an idea for a novel or even something to save or change the world.

These types of inspirations are wonderful.  They seem to come in at random when you are least expecting them and they happen to all of us. They also seem to come in fully formed in less than a second.

Isaac Newton apocryphally had one when an apple fell on his head leading to his Laws of Motion and Theory of Gravity. What actually happens in these cases is that you are thinking of something other than the task at hand.

To understand where these types of inspiration come from, it’s worth looking at times when they don’t happen. Say you are suffering from road rage or you’ve had an email that’s upset you, I think you’ll agree it’s hard to be creative. On the other hand, if your inner critic or internal dialogue is running, it has the effect of damping inspiration and the flow of ideas.

Mind maps are a really useful tool to use to get you into a creative way of thinking.  The left brain tells the right brain, “Leave the maps to me, I’m good at structure and navigation.”  While the logical left hemisphere is busy, the right brain is left free to sneak under its radar and get into full creative flow.

To get into a dissociated mode where you are “not thinking” about an issue, here’s a simple mind mapping exercise. Note that you don’t need any special software, pen and paper is just fine.

In the middle of a piece of paper, draw a picture that represents the opportunity or issue on which you would like some inspiration.

Now get any book and pick four pages at random and count down to the 7th line on each page. When you get to the 7^th line, find the first noun in that line for each page. If there isn’t a noun, use the first adjective and if there aren’t 7 lines choose another page at random.

Now draw four branches off your central image with each of the words on them. Then, without thinking if possible, draw sub-branches with words that come to mind from each of these seed words. Like word association, just write down the first words that come into your head.  Feel free to make more associations from the new words.

You should end up with a picture something like the one below which I did in conjunction with writing this article. You will find you have been taken down several new routes in your thinking and you may even have had a blinding flash of inspiration.