Would you rush to the bookstore to have a book signed by a robot? Margaret Atwood hopes so. The Canadian author, exhausted by book-signing tours, approached Unotchit of Toronto to build a remote-controlled robotic arm to do the job instead. Unfortunately, at a demonstration at the London Book Fair this week, their LongPen system failed to sign books for fans waiting expectantly in New York.
A quick way to learn everything the web has to say about a subject of your choice will be launched at at the end of April. Submit links to five favourite news articles or blogs on the subject and your boxxet page learns the key words and then automatically fills up with relevant news stories, blog posts, maps and photos, says creator You Mon Tsang of Burlingame, California.
