So what do you think: 6 billion phone users, 1 hour a month fixing typos (an underestimate) occupying 1/730th of human existence? Globally that is near 5 million person lives of time. Perhaps someone could think of a mental way to make fixing typos pleasant.
Here's a software approach to making typos more pleasant: Right click (RC) comes with an amusing/motivating/teaching word or 4 word statement. totally different than a unix fortune, but somehow I'm reminded of that. Say I hover and right click over "Hrllo", along with suggesting Hello it shows me a pretty picture, possibly a soothing B&W line drawing, and has some funny words, or even a phrase like "Live Love Laugh", or "Hugs", or "Quietly humorous, no?", or "Quickly! relax.". Some people might customize it for different perspectives, "seize the opportunity", "Your writing -> their impression", "interns get more jobs and higher pay", "i before e except after c", "Is it true?", "is it necessary?", "Be Green: read twice, print once", "Ambitious? make one more phone call", "Bored? You're allowed to text 3 times in a row!", "Did you pay it, cancel it, or use it this month?"
For students right clicking (RC) elicits "Your writing ->their impression", "Did you look it up?, "I've got a thesaurus", Yes, No, or Now!", "Is it True?", "is it necessary?" "Put more paragraphs of knowledge in your paper, or put more knowledge in each paragraph?~". The idea is that the students, and once they graduate, society, benefits from heightening the quality of content and expression of their writing.
Startlingly, you could also tell the truth at pithy RC content. I do not know what the truth is, but for a student, "turning in what you've got is better than an extension", "The 80/20 rule is real", "Take interesting classes", "enjoy the moment of craft", "do it right", seem to hint at something. Disclaimer: I have doubts any of these pithy sayings have much to do with truth.
They could measure that RC content works, producing benefit. The cloud could provide "fortune pack" updates based on new content, and tested content. Right clicking (RC) could even talk to the cloud telling the cloud program "RC motivation items are mathematically linkable to this anonymized but unique user sending 1.5% more emails a month" If they are in Sales, and generate 10 million $ annually from selling semiconductor fab machines, then right click motivational material is, perhaps, worth $150,000 to each company averaged across a survey of numerous companies that use right click pithy motivator phrases.
At education, 1.5% better writing and 1.5% better research for an undergraduate paper does something. At a university of 10,000 students, the silly thing to say is "It's like getting 150 great students free!" Viewing things from an engineering/math perspective it turns some 69% (no pass) students to 70.5% scorers, earning a passing grade. (Nicely, this is not grade inflation but a slight reward for slight improvement). Of course all RC users would not go up 1.5%, especially the students on the verge of passing/not passing, but a 1% move in full-term average has some plausible relation to graduating 1% more people. One hundred people out of a university of 10k, or hundreds of thousands of more college graduates throughout the US has value. Hey, they "seized the day", and having read, "Want it? Earn it." wanted something and earned it.
The cloud versions tries out vast numbers of pithy sayings, likely at a "matrix experiment" math protocol. Maybe 1-10% of RC content is novel test material from the cloud/web. Nine tenths is previously measured as effective at something people like.
People, without a filter of any kind could suggest new pithy sayings. This gives rise to comedy. Jackanapes type in "be the change you want to see in your pocket", and a fiduciary humanist types in ,"Have you hugged your child today?". A script kiddie (that would be like, better than me, but give me like 4 hours with a reference book), arranges to attach "your mom" to any saying with room for more letters so there's a spew of bizarre, funny, useless, puzzling, and occasionally, *better* pithy saying like "Your mom reads twice and prints once", or "Be the change you want to see in your mom".
And, in other news, depending on the writing/editing load of the person's life 1.5% improvement is a vast overstatement. If people spend 1 hour a month fixing typos that is just one hour of glimpsed/read RC content per month. If however, it takes an hour to write a school paper, and an hour to edit it, and you write three papers a week, then that is 12 times more RC content, and could make a difference.
During editing, a word I use to mean, "using the right click side quite frequently", RC reminders are gentle, constant, at teachable moments, and on topic. Of course "Your Mom's on topic", and "You're on topic ...in bed" do reach a few thousand test users.-- beanangel, Dec 21 2020 Inevitably it would be overtaken by advertisers.-- Voice, Dec 21 2020 Advertisers will just aim for widest demographic and bland themselves out.
Pithy sayings are only really pithy if they catch the 160 billion cell wetware at the right time in the right scenario. 1.5 percent, to me, seems high.
Hopefully there's not the counter, gun picking up, effect.-- wjt, Dec 22 2020 //6 billion phone users, 1 hour a month fixing typos// - seems a massive overestimate to me... - anyway is your idea to help them take longer fixing typos, by putting distracting text in the context- sensitive menu?-- hippo, Dec 22 2020 [hippo] its not as bad as it sounds. Only PCs with mice have right click button menus.-- beanangel, Dec 22 2020 And I use the mouse buttons reversed so I don’t have a right-click menu at all-- hippo, Dec 22 2020 <slaps hippo> Unnatural child!-- DrBob, Dec 23 2020 I like this idea.
When I'm actively doing a thing, the right advice at the right time would be useful.-- chronological, Apr 20 2022 random, halfbakery