Margaret Atwood releases the Appwood for iPhone

Margaret Atwood – author, entrepreneur, Twitter enthusiast, and Tech 2.0 guru – announced today the release of the Appwood, an app that allows iPhones to convert humdrum text messages, tweets, e-mails, and Facebook updates into something that sounds as though they have come from the keyboard of the literary master herself.

Atwood told Q&Q she got the idea after being consistently dismayed by what she calls the “debased quality of online rhetoric.” The Web, she says, has much potential for “rich dialogue and new forms of emotional grammar,” but from what she has seen so far, it is a “potential Prospero that mumbles and barks like Caliban for lack of time and patience.”

The app uses a sophisticated algorithm that scans text and converts commonly used phrases into Atwoodian repartees.

Some examples:

Without Appwood: “WTF? Boming Lybya? That’s CRZ”
With Appwood: “War is what happens when language fails”

Without: “Ppl need to chill.. Therez 2 much gunz and killing”
With Appwood: “An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness”

Without: “Tell yr boss to 2 STFU LOL”
With Appwood: “This above all: refuse to be a victim <>”

The app, available for download from Atwood’s website, currently costs $9.99, but is offered free to users who have recently purchased one of her books. The Year of the Flood buyers, furthermore, are entitled to a free upgrade that will automatically sign their names to online petitions by The Writers’ Union of Canada and Ducks Unlimited.

This story was posted as part of a very special April Fools’ Day package.