HEMA
Lovely little Rube Goldberg storefront at the Dutch HEMA shopping site. (Flash required)
Jim on 11.24.07 @ 02:54 PM ET [link]
Alphasmart
My kids' school is using Alphasmart tablets as a simple word processor for their stories and reports. These are ultra-cheap word processing devices with only a keyboard and a four-line LCD display for text. All you can do on them is type. The kids either write their first draft longhand and then enter it into the Alphasmart, or they compose directly on the device itself. They can sit in the classroom and write, or take them home.
When they're done, they just plug them into the Macs in the classroom and it uploads their text. They can then print out a final draft if they want.
These things run off a few AA batteries and the battery life is fantastic. I've read that some writers use them because of their portability and their unintrusiveness - you can't get distracted with the web, email, IM, etc. You can actually pick up older Alphasmarts on Ebay for a song.
As someone who has had poor handwriting skills all my life, I'm not one of those who will bemoan the loss of longhand.
Jim on 11.23.07 @ 04:01 PM ET [link]