Typewriters burst onto the literary scene in the 1860s’s and quickly became indispensable tools for authors to quickly write their next book. They fell out of favor in the 1980’s as the world started to embrace digital publishing, which provided the ability to spellcheck their work and send manuscripts quickly to agents and friends. A new product called the Hemingwrite, seeks to marry the old school typewriter with a modern digital version.
The Hemingwrite is designed to aid both the new and established writer by providing a robust writing tool that completely removes all distraction from our daily connected lives. Wifi connectivity has been included to sync to the cloud but without a browser or email client there will be no playing angry birds or checking email. The Hemingwrite is designed for one thing and one thing only: putting words on a page.
This device features a full fledged mechanical keyboard, so you get that tectonic feel of interacting with a high-grade keyboard. You can see what you are writing, thanks to the six inch e-Ink display, the same e-paper found on the Amazon Kindle. This will result in over ten weeks of battery life, perfect for a small writing retreat.
One of the things I really like is the built in syncing processes with a number of online storage services, such as Google Docs, Dropbox or Evernote. This will give you a place to store your eBook and serve as a backup source for all of your revisions. If you want to just write, the developers behind this product boast that device storage will easily handle over one million pages.
The Hemingwrite is still in the prototype phase. The device has actually made it as a semi-finalist for Engadget’s Insert Coin inventor’s competition and will be debuting the device at the Engadget Expand NY conference on November 7th and 8th.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.