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April 22, 2008

New Service Will Monitor Your Site For Typos

Jason Kincaid

27 comments »

Automatic spell check has been built into many browsers for years, but typos continue to plague even the most reputable websites (and print media, for that matter). Recognizing this fact, a number of services have emerged that will continuously monitor your site for spelling errors.

Spellr.us, currently in a registration-required beta, plans to offer hourly, daily, and weekly sweeps of your site, and will provide a visual snapshot of a page with errors clearly marked with strikethroughs. Their main competitor at this point is NetMechanic, which has been available for years but lacks any of the visualizations promised by Spellr.us.

This space is still in its infancy, but I can imagine that these services will be a boon to bloggers and other website publishers. The company’s current questionnaire alludes to a price range of around $50 - clearly a worthwhile investment for many sites. Keep a look out for Spellr.us in the near future.

CrunchBase Information
Spellr.us
Information provided by CrunchBase
  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Spellr.us » Blog Archive » Features, hosting & obligatory first post.

    May 8th, 2008 at 12:14 am

  2. precariousPanther Web Blog » Blog Archive » spellr.us - The website spell-checking spider! (One of my projects)

    May 15th, 2008 at 5:08 am

  3. Spellr.us Launches: Check Your Site For Spelling Erors

    May 15th, 2008 at 4:10 pm

Comments

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  1. zell

    April 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    So, when are you planning to start using them? Seriously.

  2. Roy

    April 22nd, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    Blogs, sure, but imagine the boon to retailers. Retailers have up to hundreds of thousands of product descriptions. It’s entirely impossible to manually screen them as they are imported, uploaded, written, or keyed. And there are usually enough steps involved, that errors are almost a certainty.

    The dozens of records I maintain are bad enough, and I’m a spec on a flea compared to many retailers.

  3. Stephen Ayer

    April 22nd, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    Terrific that Spellr can’t spell speller… :)

  4. Asad

    April 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    Now that is a useful Web 2.0 Company.

  5. Kobe for MVP

    April 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    need to have a contest on techcrunch to see which writer has more typos overall in their blog posts…..my bet is on Duncan Riley

  6. Billy

    April 22nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    How does it handle comments? The noise from misspelled comments would be never ceasing.

  7. brian

    April 22nd, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    very appropriate post.

    i notice something odd about the company description posted, however…

    “Spellr.us is a high quality automated web site spell check tool.
    The tool is used to run once off tests as well as monthly, weekly, daily, hourly monitoring of websites. Reports will include incorrectly SPELT words as well as screenshots of…”

  8. Peter Urban

    April 22nd, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    This is cool. English is not my mother tongue so any help to get it right is welcome.

  9. Jason Kincaid

    April 22nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    @brian

    Spelt is spelt correctly.

    It simply isn’t used often in the United States.

  10. Ryan Spahn

    April 22nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    Great idea! Useful too

  11. Sebastian

    April 22nd, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    I can imagine tons of use for this project.

    For example, Wikipedia-content could be auto-checked, the results could be submitted, human editors could check and fix errors. (Would be terrific marketing for Spellr, if it works good.)

  12. Chris Thomson

    April 22nd, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    This would be excellent for blogs with tons of content, and sites like Mahalo that are checked for spelling mistakes often.

  13. Zach

    April 22nd, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    You should get them as a sponsor.

  14. Darren

    April 22nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    Jason, please forward the URL to Erick for future Liveblogging events… ;)

  15. Michael Kimsal

    April 22nd, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    Will it handle grammar as well? Or is that slated for the future? Misusing “there” “they’re” and “their”, for example, would not be something a pure spellchecker would pick up, but it’s definitely bad.

  16. Don Jones

    April 22nd, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    This will be good for TechCrunch!

  17. Monchster

    April 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    I agree with M Kimsal’s comment. While spelling is essential for a professionally looking site, blunders in the misuse of similarly sounded words can make a site seem like an 8th grader has put it together.

    Sounds like an ok tool to me, but personally, I wouldn’t pay for it. That’s why company’s pay their editors, and I use MS Word.

    Just my 2 cents….

  18. James Siminoff

    April 22nd, 2008 at 8:25 pm

    Great idea!

  19. Andrew

    April 22nd, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    look at the entry on http://www.crunchbase.com/company/spellr-us

    Language is misspelled as “languge” :-)

    “Spellr.us is a high quality automated web site spell check tool.

    The tool is used to run once off tests as well as monthly, weekly, daily, hourly monitoring of websites. Reports will include incorrectly spelt words as well as screenshots of webpage with incorrect word highlighted. Various languge dictionaries will be available as well as ability to upload and add to custom dictionary.”

  20. Wes Mahler

    April 22nd, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    lol@1

    I’d use this, put in my email hopefully its ready soon. I typo all the time :)

  21. Manuel

    April 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 am

    If it will allow me to upload and add to a custom dictionary, then it can really be very useful!

  22. Helen Leggatt

    April 23rd, 2008 at 2:21 am

    Will it spell check in proper English or U.S. English? ;-)

  23. Kevin Garber

    April 23rd, 2008 at 7:51 am

    Hi All

    Thank you for all the comments and for everyone who registered for the launch announcement as well as the beta program.

    We are very excited to get it all up and running.

    As long time fans of Techcrunch it was the obvious choice for the very first “out of stealth mode” announcement.

    Beta testers please be patient we will be in touch with all of you soon.

    I think some of you have been a bit rough on Techcrunch re their typos.

    Keeping even a small site typo free can be a challenge let alone a site as large and dynamic as Techcrunch.

    As a matter of interest I ran the first 10 pages of Techcrunch through spellr.us

    There were very few typos picked up, 3 though include

    firends
    Found on: http://www.techcrunch.com/tech.....goes-chic/

    Febuary
    Found on: http://www.techcrunch.com

    messsages
    Found on: http://www.techcrunch.com/

    So our app does indeed work! *whew*

    But we have run dozens of sites through our application - and there are organisations with far bigger websites and bigger brands than Techcrunch with far more mistakes.

    And yes we will have UK English and USA English dictionaries.

    Greetings from central Sydney CBD!

    Kevin & The Team @ Spellr.us

  24. Anne H

    April 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 am

    How does this service differ from TextTrust?

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