I’ve just discovered a new timewaster which may slow down my productivity over at wetellstories.co.uk which uses Google Maps and other internet technologies to track the characters and action of the story.

The idea was conceived by Penguin, the publishing giant as a digital writing project which harnesses the power of the internet, and uses the technology available to enhance the story. Six different authors were commissioned to write six different stories which would be presented in a very different way to the traditional novel by using social networking tools such as blogs and twitters to enhance the story.

The death of the paper novel has been predicted for several years with the introduction of e-books and e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle, which were able to store several books at once and allowed the user to carry the device around to read anywhere. These devices have been predicted to become more and more popular for a while now and it hasn’t happened yet and I don’t think it ever will. A high number of people now spend a large part of their day at a computer screen and the last thing they would want to do is look at a different one in order to read a book. Each day I get the train into work and I see several people reading books on the journey, but I’ve yet to see one e-book reader.

Although the technology is available to operate theses devices and it is a good idea, I can’t see it becoming hugely popular to store and read e-books however I think what Penguin have done is an interesting idea and has the potential to succeed.