Italian Pens Novel Using Mobile Phone

By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews

July 27, 2007, 2:22 PM

In yet another sign of our increasingly mobile lifestyle, an Italian author has completed a 384-page science fiction novel without the use of a computer or pen and paper. Robert Bernocco wrote the entire book using his Nokia 6630 mobile phone by dividing the manuscript into short paragraphs.

Bernocco, who wrote in his native Italian, utilized the phone's T9 predictive text input designed by Tegic and formerly owned by AOL. He did not use shorthand and transferred the text to his computer only for proofreading. It took Bernocco 17 weeks to complete the novel, working mostly while commuting to and from work on the train. The book -- "Fellow Travelers" in English -- is available for purchase via Lulu.com, which serves as a marketplace for authors looking to self-publish their work.