If you've met Glenda in a chat room, but want to make sure she’s not a Glen before a physical meeting, then help is at hand. A Malaysian boffin has developed text analysis software that, she claims, can distinguish between men and women.

The software analyses the text within an email, and Professor Dianne Cheong Lee Mei claims it can pick out women due to their tendency to be more expressive within emails. The software will scan emails to measure the number of words, how much emotion is expressed, and how many exclamation marks and compliments are used.

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Presumably men’s emails are the opposite, with very few words, no exclamation marks and little in the way of compliments?

Although further information about how the software reveals the sender’s gender hasn’t been given, it could be useful if you need to confirm someone’s gender because you only need them to send you an email.

The professor’s software was unveiled at the Geneva Inventions Expo, an annual technology and inventions trade fair, held last week. Some of the equally wacky creations included artificial nose hair and a self-making bed that uses two fasteners to roll the bed sheet out and other metal bars to push the sheet into place.

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