EVER sent an e-mail and regretted it? Your computer will soon be able to warn
you if your words are likely to offend. E-mail “flaming” is rife, but not all
of it is intentional. “Brief e-mails can be a bit more terse than intended,”
says Helen Petrie, a psychologist at Hertfordshire University in Hatfield. “It’s
easy to be rude without meaning it.”
This inspired Qualcomm of San Diego, California—maker of the Eudora
e-mail package—to write software that seeks out wounding words. “We’re
trying to stop people making a mistake they might regret,” explains technology
chief Rob Chandhok.
Qualcomm…
