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LongPen goes digital as iDoLVine

Margaret Atwood’s LongPen has gone digital in its latest iteration as iDoLVine’s LiveSign. According to Matthew Gibson, president and co-founder at iDoLVine and president and CTO at Syngrafii, the tech company responsible for creating and managing the LongPen, as the latter company increasingly focuses on products for business users, it has transferred and exclusively licensed intellectual property and trademarks to iDoLVine, which will continue to develop the technology’s applications in fan and artistic markets. The company will offer a preview LiveSign, the latest digital development in LongPen technologies, at BookExpo America next week.

Using an Internet connection, the program’s digital signing technology, LiveSign, allows for a secure, authentic, trackable, and verifiable reproduction of an author’s live signature on e-books (regardless of DRM protection) and flat-surfaced objects, including print books “ all while the author interacts with audiences via live video during in-person and virtual events.

From iDoLVine’s press release:

Authentic remote signing is only one element of a virtual platform that emulates the entire tour, including a pre-event gathering place for readers, author-to-fan meeting via live video on the Internet, and a virtualized stage that makes it truly engaging.

The technology also allows suppliers to securely add the author’s signature before forwarding DRM-protected e-books to online retailers.

McArthur & Company, one of the program’s publishing parnters, gave its staff a sneek peek at the program last week at the company’s sales conference. Illustrator DuÅ¡an Petričić demonstrated LiveSign by autographing and doodling on the e-cover of Wandering Wenda, his upcoming children’s book with Margaret Atwood. Other publishing partners include Random House, Harlequin, McClelland & Stewart, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, O’Reilly Media, and HarperCollins.

Atwood will be on-hand at BookExpo America to demonstrate the new virtual book tour technology, along with authors Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Erica Jong, Mark Jeffrey, Peter Meyers, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Gena Showalter, and Svetlana Chmakova. The full launch is expected in fall 2011.