It's been an interesting month having an iPad before the Australian release.

It's also been good to blog about it both here and over at www.geehall1.org  in that time. I didn't have to wait in any lines, although I did have to pay just a tad more and sit through two false starts using the eBay system. That's what happens when you want to be an early adopter.

This morning, however, I read a tweet by one of my Twitter correspondents about how my month of blog posts had helped him convert some people to the iPad. Being able to give some early insights into its use has done some good, then.

I'm also working since the weekend on my second novel using the Pages app on the iPad, testing out just how this works and to what degree it's usable for productive writing.

Just to have something to contrast it against, I also installed the full Pages 09 to my Macbook. So far I'm up to the third chapter of this novel and should have another two done later today.

If I were to make just ONE recommendation to Apple about Pages at the moment, it would be for them to add a novel template, or at the very least, put in sections or section breaks. That's ALL I'd ask from them for Pages for iPad right now.

Other than that, I'm impressed with it and its iWork stablemates as MOBILE productivity programs. I've never seen a MOBILE word-processor this good. It helps that I treat Pages for iPad for exactly what it is, a MOBILE app. It's what gets you started out on the road, it's good for quick creation of documents on the road. Whether it can be used effectively for novel-writing is a personal experiment. It's a challenge. I like to explore what I can or can't do with it. And there's no reason I can't try. If it's not been done before, it's still very much worth a try.

Since Saturday I've used the Keyboard Dock for large amounts of writing, although I still find the on-screen keyboard just as usable. It's kind of fun having the iPad and Keyboard dock set up, the footprint of it all taking up way less room than the nine-year-old's laptop. It also makes a handy stand when we want to listen to some music or play some videos in the kitchen.

And the apps...I've found at least a few decent note apps, my favorite being ableNotes. This particular app allows you to use text, freehand drawing, photos, Google Maps and even web-clippings in a note. The nine-year-old got a brilliant assist with his homework last week, using ableNotes. He was able to do a poster of famous people of Melbourne's past AND a collage of his favorite Melbourne landmark. One quick, emailed PDF from it later, it was printed out on his own computer and pasted to his homework book.

Anyway, since www.geehall1.org has been the predominant blog I've used for iPad stuff, I'll continue there with that topic, while keeping this blog for general tech and social media topics. That still leaves www.geehall1.com.

I'm going to field suggestions on what topics to run on my third domain. Should I serialize the new novel there? Or should I pick a whole new field? Your feedback will be welcome.