Here's something that I picked up at Academix 2010.  It's a way for for folks who have no coding chops whatsoever to quickly and easily build iPad-optimized web apps from text, images and video that they collect.  The presentation I got this from was delivered by Sal Soghoian who is the AppleScript Product Manager at Apple, Inc. Fortunately for us, he's developed a companion web sited called Padilicious where you can read all about it and download all of the materials you'll need to learn how to generate iPad-optimized web applications in minutes.

This method takes advantage of several MacOS X technologies (AppleScript, Automator and Services) so you'll need a modern Mac running MacOS X 10.6.x (Snow Leopard) or later. What you'll be downloading from Padilicious and using is an automated workflow that requires zero HTML coding expertise. If you can select text and find/select files on your computer, you have all the necessary skills to create iPad web apps.

So what is a web app? A web app is a web site that looks and operates very much like a native application for iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch). If you create a web clip of this site on your iPad (instructions here), it will operate in full screen mode so none of the usual web browser controls are seen making it look even more like a native application.

With these Automator Actions and Services installed, creating a web app is a simple matter of selecting text, optionally selecting an image, an audio file or a movie and then invoking the service and using a forms like interface to choose various options.

So far, there are two automated workflows:

1) Create Single-page Web App
EXAMPLES (click on thumbnail images in rightmost column)

2) Create iPad Photo Web App.
EXAMPLES (click on thumbnail images in rightmost column)

To fully appreciate the examples, use an iPad, load the web site, create a web clip for it and then revisit the site using the web clip icon.

Feel free to post your iPad web apps here in the comments. I'd love to see them.