My wife sent me a text the other night "not sure if I can get a can." She meant cab (though to be sure, can is in short supply in this economy). It was the latest in a series of auto-correct mild amusements. When I try to respond "yay" to an email or text message, my Blackberry steps in and sends "gay" which makes me seem very 1940s.
Ages ago, I asked people working the Twitter to offer some of their auto-correct nightmares. Here are some of the responses:
@kscincotta: @jdickerson - My phone keeps trying to change "Yankees" into "wankers". #correxmenot
@nancyscola: iPhone changes my mom's nickname, Joojee, to "Hooker"
@thenote: Kagan is Jahangir on my Droid
@ sacca My iPhone corrected "AT&T" to "Ayatollah".
@ zachroth92 'yeah' being changed to 'yeshiva'!
@JonHenke I once had this happen "you should turn that room into a murderer". Or a nursery. Your pick.
@JonHenke: My Droid used to change "fyi" to "dying"
@Sutebia I live you.
Tmerrifi congatulating a Duke grad on their win I wrote "Dulles!
derektixx once typed "in a loud bar need me?" ...to "in a loud bar need men".
@andylevy iPhone changes OMG to IMF.
@FeistyShelia
iPhone also corrects to "ducking" "Cynthia" which adds to
my grouchy.
My colleague Farhad Manjoo wrote a piece about how the cell phone's autocorrect software works and why it's getting better.
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