In my final wrap-up post about Daniel Burrus’s great new book, Flash Foresight, I’d like to show you three new technology products that can help you take your business or product to a new level. These tools are cutting edge and I plan to explore all three as I put together a personal development seminar called Relevant Light. Let’s take a look at how they work and how they may help you create cutting edge products or services.
1. Scrivener: If you are an entrepreneur, small business person, or blogger, you know the importance of writing a book. A book will give you credibility, provide an alternative income source, and give you a great marketing tool to increase your audience. The problem is, in 2012, there are so many publishing options, where do you start? Currently you can…
- Go through a traditional publisher and publish in hard cover, paperback, and Kindle
- Self Publish in paper based print on demand format, epub format, and Kindle format
- Create a standalone e-book in PDF format that you sell on your website
- Create an interactive textbook for the iPad using iBooks Author
- Create an audiobook
If you have ever tried to output your document in multiple formats, you know the utter frustration of the current technology. Most programs, such as Word and Pages, offer minimal output options. Worse yet, they don’t offer any way to keep secondary items, such as graphics, photographs and videos organized in any way. If you are working on a multi-format project you’ll soon find yourself with an organizational mess.
This is where Scrivener shines. Scrivener is a content-generation tool for writers that allows you to compile and organize long and complicated documents.
Scrivener allows you to edit and combine multiple documents at once. This allows you to easily cut, paste, and revise all on one screen. With the built-in outlining tool, you can re-arrange chapters and sections with ease.
The corkboard tool allows you to see a synopsis of each section at a glance to easily compile a document to your specifications by simply moving cards around on a corkboard.
To get an idea how to use this useful tool, take a few minutes and watch the instructional video above. You’ll be amazed how this can help your writing workflow. The output features allow you to create documents formatted for conventional publishers as well as output for self published books using Amazon’s CreateSpace. The new version will also output in popular e-book formats such as epub and Kindle. Overall, this one tool can turn you into a full featured book author and publisher in no time.
2. iBooks Author. This innovative program for the Mac allows you to create interactive textbooks for the iPad. The included editor allows you to create galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects and more. While this type of file is only viewable on the iPad, with the growing base of users and it’s interactive nature, this is the future of textbooks and seminar workbooks.
Take a look at the incredible features of this product in the video above. This is the future. I’ve been experimenting with the wide variety of features. While it’s a little daunting at first, the updated version works well. I hope to have a sample workbook out soon for testing.
3. Interactive Video Selections. Imagine watching a video that presents you with an emotionally charged situation. Just at the peak of the excitement, the video stops and you are presented with a menu. You get to choose the ending and the outcome.
In my current book and video project, Relevant Light, I want to be able to show my video viewers what the consequences of their choices will be. They’ll watch a video segment and them choose an action. The video will show them the outcome of their particular choice. I think this will have powerful ramifications with an audience.
While I have worked with this type of product in the past by custom designing video interfaces using Adobe Flash, I’m currently in the market for a solution that will output in HTML 5 for compatibility with iPad and other IOS devices. If you currently know of such a product, please leave a comment below.
Overall: These three programs can help you create a cutting edge book or video project that can help you take your business to the next level.
Question: What type of project would you use these on?
