Over three million iPad owners already know the truth – that the iPad can be an invaluable tool for personal, school and business use.

Yep – they are sexy and hip.  But the beauty of the iPad isn’t only it’s entertainment value. It’s a “magical’ device that was designed for content consumption. The only place I check mail now is on my iPad because the workflow is 100% simpler then directly in Gmail. It’s faster, it’s easier and it’s better looking too. I can go through 100 messages on my iPad in 5 minutes, whereas it would take me 30 minutes in Gmail.

We do a lot of the market leadership, staying up to date kind of work with Google Reader – subscribing to the relevant feeds in our market, popping over to Twitter to share, writing a quick blog post.  I’m  putting together a Report that will be available shortly that will show you some of the ways you as a business owner can get the most out of your iPad.

In the video below, Ed Dale shares his “intake” workflow – that is, how he takes in the most important information in his niches and gets it out to his marketplace.

He uses the iPad (if you know Ed, that’s no surprise to you).

But even if you don’t (have one or want one) I’d like you to take the 16 minutes to watch this video – because all tools aside, it’s a real-deal peek into what it takes to BE a market leader.

How to take it all in and how to put it all back out there for your crowd and have them coming back for more.

Read between the lines, past the tech (the tech is incredibly sexy though!).

As we head into 2011 Social Media becomes more important than ever.

Facebook becomes one of the most powerful forms to advertise on and build a community with.  Even recently it was announced by Matt Cutts – a software engineer with Google – says that Social Media sites will even help effect website rankings.  See what he has to say about that in this video.

Reading a recent article on Mediapost, I found myself silently cheering because I loved what I was reading; and, know that what I was reading is truth.

Yet, if you read the one comment, the person who commented, did not understand what the article was saying.  And that is the truth as well.

Marketing has changed so dramatically with the widespread use of social media.  A few years ago, most people wouldn’t have thought to use short videos on a YouTube branded channel to find interested prospects who would turn a book launch from easily forgotten to wildly successful.  But the article referenced above and the YouTube Channel I’ll post here as well, shows that a series of short, branded and focused videos can sell books (excerpt below from the Mediapost article):

“Bender’s first idea to market the book prompted the grandparents to shoot an iChat video and become spokespeople. So he talked them through recording it. In the first video they would explain how to pre-order the book. He got back the video and realized grandma had never disconnected the sound and camera after shooting the prepared remarks.

“It was perfect because in that extra footage, my grandma looks in the camera, talks on the phone, and my grandfather dances in the background,” Bender says. “We uploaded the video to YouTube and it got a really big reaction.”

That “big reaction” sent pre-orders for book sales rocking. The video got picked up by AOL and Huffington Post and Random House had the second most successful prelaunch for a book behind “The Girl With The Red Dragon Tattoo,” according to Bender.

The grandparents became the spokespeople in the marketing campaign. They’re family. It’s real. It made the campaign ambitious and natural. Random House ran ads for the book based on the videos of the grandparents. Awkward Family Photos has been on The New York Times bestsellers list for more than 16 weeks.”

Take a look for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/user/AwkwardFamilyPhotos

Or watch this one which has had over 130,000 views to date:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Staying both inspired and continuing to believe in yourself are two ongoing skills that all authors, entrepreneurs and creative people need to embrace in order to overcome self-doubt – especially when the going gets rough (which we all experience at one time or another). I wrote “The Land of I Can” to assist with that journey and the ‘download’ process of that message arrived in my head all at one time and complete in it’s message. When I listened to this talk offered my Elizabeth, it gave me pause to remember that process while giving me an ever deeper insight how others have had that similar experience.

Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

I read a post at TechCrunch that mentioned, “Some time in the last few days Google launched a new feature called the “Search Stories Video Creator“. And damn if it isn’t fun. The new feature prompts you to input up to seven search queries spread across Google’s search features (including Images, Maps, and standard web search), choose a song, and it generates a video in the same style as Google’s other Search Stories.

The whole process only takes a few minutes (the tool automatically uploads your video to YouTube when you’re ready). And while there are plenty of parodies already out there, we can expect a whole lot more of them to pop up in the next few days.”

I gave it a whirl and it’s easy, fun and uploads directly to YouTube.   Here’s mine I titled:  Who’s on Search?

Have some fun and hurry on over to make one of your own: http://www.youtube.com/searchstories

When Google Wave was first announced, it was confusing to understand what it was and how it would work.

Then I saw this video and thought it was perfect to share with you….

As I answered questions via email recently that became rainbow hues of colors during the volley, it made me wistful for the Wave as I await my Invite…

Did you know the Invites are actually being auctioned on Ebay?

Google Wave will start to become a lot more valuable once more users get access to the site. It seems that Google is trying to roll out Wave to people as quickly as the service will allow, so the wait for those of us who haven’t been lucky enough to snag an invite yet hopefully shouldn’t be too bad.

This post has nothing to do with business or social media and everything to do with life.

With two senior dogs in my life and an elderly parent, I was moved deeply by the connection demonstrated in this video.

I’ve posted it on my Facebook page, and wanted to make sure that if you aren’t one of my friends there, you see this:

You can read more about Baxter on his web site:
www.momentswithbaxter.com

Baxter is on Facebook, also