The Dana wireless by Alphasmart showed up yesterday. It is way cool. It found my Powerbook G4 with no problem. I’ll be able to do my work on it and send the text to the Apple for editing. Now if it would only write a universally beloved novel for me, I’d be a happy guy.
Mary and I drove 600 miles from Vancouver, WA to home yesterday and the Dana was waiting for us. I had been tracking it for several days and hoped that it would arrive just about the same time we returned from Washington, which it did. What a warm day it was for travel—at one point the thermometer peaked at 116 (that’s fooking hot for my UK readers) near Shasta Lake. Hooray for air conditioning.
During our trip south, Mary read to me two stories assigned by YouWriteOn.com. One with fluid language but no discernible plot. The other (a putative thriller) with little discernible plot, overwrought language, maddening head hopping, and an unsympathetic protagonist.
Mary recorded our impressions on the (older) Alphasmart 2000 as we drove. I’ve already transferred the text to a Word file and will write up my full review sometime today.
This Dana is a sweet little gizmo. I’m going to use it mostly for writing but supposedly I could check email. I’m not sure I need to do much more than work up responses which I can do with the little word-processing program.
Nullius in Verba 
If the Dana wrote a universally beloved novel, it would want the credit. It would get thoroughly above itself, and probably refuse to carry out humbler tasks for you. You’d have to drive it round the country for book signings, and hold its hand during interviews.
Take my advice, let it do the grunt work, while you compose the ubn.
And don’t give it a name.
I’d settle for the universally reviled novel if it was insanely successful like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Vilified to the bank and endlessly talked about. Shelfari.com has a “I hate the Da Vinci Code” group.