Google Docs—the beloved tool without which this site would grind to a halt—has updated its spell checker! Sure, in theory that's a "what could be more boring" scenario. But you guys, it's pretty awesome.
The updated spell checking bakes in the power of Google's "Did you mean" technology, meaning that instead of relying on a static dictionary, it uses the context of your word alongside Google's powerful "Did you mean" database to learn new words, offer spelling suggestions based on context rather than just similarity, and that it can even catch typos when the misspelled word is just the wrong dictionary word. The advantages spelled out in more detail, from the Google Docs blog:
1. Suggestions are contextual. For example, the spell checker is now smart enough to know what you mean if you type "Icland is an icland."
2. Contextual suggestions are made even if the misspelled word is in the dictionary. If you write "Let's meat tomorrow morning for coffee" you'll see a suggestion to change "meat" to "meet."
3. Suggestions are constantly evolving. As Google crawls the web, we see new words, and if those new words become popular enough they'll automatically be included in our spell checker-even pop culture terms, like Skrillex.
You may still not care, but you'd be nuts not to think this is awesome technology in action.
Update: As reader TwinIon suggests, this could be a killer feature baked into Chrome (assuming you could toggle it if you had privacy concerns).
Update 2: Looks like Google's already starting to integrate this into Chrome's dev and canary channels, which means if you're using the bleeding edge releases of Chrome, you can enable it by opening Settings, clicking the Show advanced settings link, then ticking the checkbox next to "Use a web service to help resolve spelling errors". At this point, it's not quite working in the same way the Google Docs version works, but it's a promising start.
Spell checking powered by the web | Google Docs Blog
When you're typing a word you don't know or remember how to spell, you can quickly get a list of suggestions by pressing the escape key in most OS X text editors. Just type as much of the word as you know, press escape, and OS X will offer up as many possibilities as it knows. You can look through the list and find what you want, quickly, without the need to use your mouse or bother with multiple keystrokes. Check out the video above for a demonstration.
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