"The publishing industry is moving rapidly into the digital age," says DiTerlizzi. "I see the integrated use of AR as an ideal bridge, enhancing what readers love best about story and narrative while tapping innovation and imagination, to bring forth entirely new experiences associated with the book."

Exploring the World of WondLa

To access the experience, users need to install Total Immersion's D'Fusion plugin and wait for the applet to load within their browser. I found the experience was loading slow on Chrome, and it didn't load a whole lot faster after switching to Safari.

A few minutes later, when it was up and running, I realized some interesting decisions had been made in the development of app. The interaction one can have with the 3D maps by moving the book around infront of the webcam is very limited. You can move the experience up and down, and can zoom a bit, but that's about it.

This is because the app was designed to be a one-way experience. Once the webcam recognizes an emblem, you can set down the book and let the app take you on a tour of the 3D map. This is mostly a good decision, because it makes it easier for young users to quickly understand what is happening (not to mention the fact that the book is rather large, and kids may grow tired of holing it up).

It is slightly disappointing, however, that more interaction was not built into the experience. In this case, as augmented reality is introduced to a new audience of young adults, it makes sense to simplify things a bit. It's great to see a major publisher like Simon & Schuster get behind augmented reality, as implementations like these could change the way young adults read in the near future.

Earlier, Borders Australia and Random House held a contest to find twenty-eight writers who would be able to write the bulk of the book. The chapters they produce will need to be less than 750 words so, obviously, this book will be a little lighter than Patterson's other novels.

Once complete, Airborne will be released electronically, one chapter at a time, starting on March 20th. Later, a print edition will be published, but only as a prize of sorts for the participants in the competition - it will not be mass produced.

Collaborative Writing is So Very Web 2.0

The roots of the collaborative writing movement can be found in many web startups, including those like Novlet, Potrayl, Ficlets, Unblokt, Protagonize, and others we profiled here. A popular activity for creative writers, these communities offer various takes on how a co-written story should be developed, some focused more on "choose your own adventure"-style stories while others focus more on linear narratives.

Although the James Patterson novel is more of a marketing campaign than anything else - and, in this case, the "crowd" is actually a hand-picked selection of aspiring writers - it's still interesting to see such a widely-read writer embracing the co-writing trend. While those passionate about the subject may say this particular effort doesn't qualify since it isn't truly written by "the crowd," it's events like this that take the general idea behind the trend and cross it over to where it can make a mark on the minds of the mainstream.

What remains to be seen at this point is whether a crowdsourced, co-written novel can actually be any good.

Those interested in following the progress of AirBorne can do so on Facebook, Twitter, and via RSS.

In this post I check back in with the NaNoWriMo website to see what's changed over the years; and how much social web technology it's now using.

According to Wikipedia the NaNoWriMo project was started by Chris Baty in July 1999, with 21 participants in the San Francisco Bay area. The website was launched in 2000 and participants at that time communicated with each other via a Yahoo! group. In 2000, 140 participants attempted NaNoWriMo and 21 wrote 50,000 words. The site continued to grow and in 2007, a record 101,767 people registered - a bit over 15,000 of those managed to complete their 50k novel by the deadline. According to the NaNoWriMo twitter account, the current tally for 2008 is 118,583 authors, with 4,343 'winners' so far.

What's more, the site has raised $272,768 - NaNoWriMo is run by Office of Letters and Light, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity. It's very open on where the money goes.

As well as the much-used forums, there is NaNoWriMo activity happening in many places across the Web. You can read the NaNoWriMo blog, install a Firefox add-on to display your progress, upload a pic to the Flickr group, tweet your progress, skim the Mahalo page, listen to WrimoRadio (the official podcast), and much more. However, it's fair to say that most of the discussions are still happening in the official forums. As of today there are 19,354 threads and 307,760 posts in there. So things haven't changed too much.

From the NaNoWriMo "Write-In Event"; InfoCommons@West; November 19, 2008; pic by UF InfoCommons

Other Pic: Sashala

Let us know if any RWW readers participated in NaNoWriMo this year - perhaps you're busy frantically putting the finishing touches to your novel right now! I know how you feel :-)