Ahsome

[Wilson Gray]

Thanks, arnold! I didn't know about DealLocker. Ahsome!

-Wilson

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky
<zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>  Subject:      Ahsome
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  > From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
>  > Date: April 8, 2008 4:28:05 PM PDT
>  > To: ADS <ADS-L at listserv.uga.edu>
>  > Subject: Ahsome
>
>  > about 2k hits for "ahsome" (for you lovers of the cot/caught
>  > distinction), including this piece on typos from the Toronto Sun
>  >  www.torontosun.com/Entertainment/ Columnists/Tilley_Steve/
>  > 2008/02/04/pf-4824184.html
>
>  > Ahsome web find
>  > By STEVE TILLEY
>
>  > Sometimes a typo is more than a typo. Like a few years ago when a
>  > local Chinese restaurant mailed out menus with a chicken dish
>  > featuring "tender white meat of children." (True story.)
>  > Or when a Miami lawyer filed court documents on behalf of a client
>  > who had just undergone painful disk surgery and couldn't sit through
>  > a trial. Except in his motion , the lawyer typed disk with a "c"
>  > instead of an "s". (Also a true story.)
>  >
>  > When it comes to auction sites and online classified ads, typos can
>  > end up costing sellers money, or saving buyers a bundle. Let's say
>  > you're selling your PlayStation 3 on eBay to raise money for
>  > grandma's kidney operation, except in the item description you
>  > accidentally type "PlayStaion 3," a typo so common I've actually
>  > programmed my spellchecker to auto-correct it.
>  >
>  > That missing "t" means anyone doing an eBay search for the game
>  > console by its proper name won't see your listing. Sure, it'll still
>  > show up in the right category and whatnot, but most eBay users just
>  > type the name of whatever they're looking for into the search bar
>  > and go from there.
>  >
>  > Fewer people seeing a listing means fewer bids, which in turn means
>  > a lower selling price. Bad news for the seller, but it can be a real
>  > boon for a buyer who stumbles across one of these listings, isolated
>  > from the herd like a wounded gazelle. Easy prey.
>  >
>  > The people behind the DealLocker.com website (which has the
>  > particularly useful "Amazon secret discount finder" tool) have
>  > seized upon this phenomenon with a new site called TypoBuddy.com.
>  >
>  > Launching tomorrow, TypoBuddy allows you to search eBay, Amazon and
>  > your local Craigslist classified ads for pretty much any item you
>  > can think of. The trick is, it takes your search term and converts
>  > it into dozens upon dozens of typo-plagued variations, in the hopes
>  > of coming across a mostly unnoticed listing for that "Volkswagon
>  > Jetta" or "expresso machine" that you're looking for.
>  >
>  > It's a cool idea, if not exactly revolutionary - canny eBay buyers
>  > have been doing deliberate typo searches for years in hopes of
>  > scoring sweet deals.
>  >
>  > The only problem with TypoBuddy is that the more popular it becomes,
>  > the less effective it will be. If everyone is suddenly doing blanket
>  > searches for "PlayStaion 3" and "PlayDtation 3" and the other 75
>  > variations TypoBuddy comes up with, the competition for those
>  > auctions will spike and the bargains will start to disappear.
>  >
>  > So it might be a good idea to keep this one to yourself. And don't
>  > go writing about it in a newspaper or anything, because then ...
>  > oops. Um, anyone up for lunch? I've got a hankering for some children.
>  >
>
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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