Authors eager to sidestep tedious book-signing tours can now do it all online. Canadian manufacturer Unotchit has come up with the LongPen, a pen-clutching robot for bookstores that inscribes the author's signature remotely. The author sits at home, linked to the store via video, chatting with customers and writing by hand onto an electronic pad, which sends signals over the Internet to the LongPen. The robotic device is the brain-child of Toronto novelist Margaret Atwood, who said she was tired after 40 years of book tours, including a bout of hitchhiking after a limo breakdown