Just read an interesting new I, Cringely about a piece of software named Talkinator. The technology seems just like a new IRC for the web with some APIs and Web 2.0 style, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. What caught my attention was that Cringely states that Taklinator doesn’t allow profanity. Being that Inversoft’s main product is a profanity filter, I had to try it out. It failed pretty badly.

Of course it catches your straight forward profanity like ass and fuck, but it does very little for anything more complex.

Here are some examples of stuff it doesn’t handle:

$hit
asslips
assface
phuck
fuk you
|)ick
sh it

That’s just a few, but the list goes on. I definitely think that people don’t understand the complexity that comes with attempting to filter profanity. It is much more difficult than it seems. I definitely think Talkinator should check out Inversoft’s Profanity Filter.