The village of Sutivan, island of Brac, one hour from Split, Croatia’s second city. An amazing place on the chain of Dalmatian islands in the Adriatic sea. Very peaceful, very remote, fantastic. But there is Wifi unfortunately! I will be disconnecting though in case you miss my blog posts or tweets…

When the iPad was first released I was a bit sceptical. I’m a Blackberry user and never warmed to he iPhone, my laptop is from HP and is running Windows Vista. It looked pretty much like something only early adopters would be interested in – a (much) fancier version of a digital photo frame with Internet functionality. It wasn’t until I got my hands on one a few weeks ago that I realised the device’s potential and started to think seriously about whether or not it was worth plonking down the money required to get one for myself. The Apple Store model of letting the public spend as long as they want ‘playing’ with new devices is a smart marketing technique…

Anyhow, having decided that an iPad would potentially make me more effective in my work as well as in my personal, web-centric life, I went along to the Apple Store on Regent Street last week and bought the Wifi 16gb iPad – pretty much the bottom of the range of all of the available devices. I opted for Wifi instead of the 3G option because in London nowadays there is a lot of free Wifi Internet access and I honestly couldn’t see myself whipping this thing out at a bus stop to check in on Twitter.

The first few days have been interesting. Firstly, the iPad is a magnet for attention, wherever it goes. Even in super cool London town, people literally stop and stare at it. This freaks me out a little but I can understand. It is a beautiful piece of equipment with a very shiny, high-definition display. There has been a lot of hype and people want to know if it’s worth the price. I haven’t used it on the Tube or bus yet, but it has seen light of day at Starbucks. I bought a small neoprene case for it which has a handle and it’s easy to take anywhere – more so than a laptop computer.

Thankfully the iPad has improved my productivity. I paid 59p for ‘Sorted’ which is a very effective and straight forward to-do list app. If I ever need to find something out or send a quick email I can just pick up the pad and do what I need to do without purposefully sitting in front of a computer. I can write on it also; this blog post is being written on the Wordpress official app for iPad. Unfortunately Google has disabled access to Google Docs and therefore the only way to get professional word-processing software is to use Apple’s £5.99 Pages app.

There a few other niggles. The spelling correction system isn’t as clever as I’d like but I’m hoping it learns with me. The keyboard is big though and quite easy to use considering it’s a touch screen device. There aren’t that many good quality apps yet but more and more are being released all the time. My favourite apps so far are Sorted, Google Earth (which looks amazing on the HD screen), Reuters News Pro, FT Mobile and NYTimes Editors’ Choice.

Overall I do think it was a good choice to get the iPad. It improves productivity, removes the barrier between human and Internet that the personal computer is and really makes it easy to be part of the web anywhere and any time – which can really make life easier and richer.

PS The battery life is amazing. Ten hours use from a full charge.

Today, Red Narrative launches its final website. Under Red Narrative, over the last eighteen months or so, I’ve taken part in some amazing projects, from local elections all around the UK to the presidential election in Afghanistan last year.

My final project under the Red Narrative banner, before moving on to other ventures, is the Oona King for Mayor campaign. oona4mayor.com is launching today, and is the official website and e-campaign for Oona King. Oona is hoping to be Labour’s candidate in the 2012 Mayoral election in London. She’s an interesting, young, vibrant candidate and whatever the outcome, it’s going to be a fascinating race.

Have a look at Oona’s website here.