Is Online Dating A True Match, Or Another Digital Dilemma?
My friend Alex is classically beautiful. She also has a really grown up, important job at one of those big, firm-y type places. Basically, she’s smart. Real smart. And has a real nice apartment. And she makes everyone laugh and has lots of real nice friends. That’s Alex.
But all of this is neither here nor there, because Alex is on a quest to find love. Isn’t that what we’re all essentially doing? Looking for that connection with someone, whether it’s a boyfriend, spouse, new drinking buddy or, at the very least, someone just to watch “Dexter” and order Domino’s with?!
Electronic enchantment?
You can all guess where this is going. The missing piece of the puzzle in this coming-of-age story is Alex’s Prince “I’m Ready For a Commitment and Will Bring You Diet Cokes When You’re Thirsty” Charming. So, what did this accomplished, intelligent, attractive woman do? Like millions of folks in this country, Alex shelled out $113.94 and joined Match.com for six months. Five years ago we both would have cringed at this, but now her posse of friends (myself included) and co-workers couldn’t tell her to sign up fast enough.
Several weeks of awkward dates (the guy who wouldn’t take a hint – or a straight-up “no”, the guy who lived with this parents, the guy who worked at The Cheesecake factory) and hundreds of “winks” and other online digital mating calls later, I couldn’t help but wonder: Is this REALLY what things have come to? We field hundreds of e-mails a day, obsessively track Facebook photos, and Tweet about a food cart selling crepes, so it seems only natural we attempt to find a potential life mate this way, right? I’m not convinced.
It is estimated that between 40 and 50 million people use online dating sites and nearly 1,000 NEW sites are launched every year. Point being, A LOT of us are using the Internet to date. This multi-million dollar industry includes everything from the old standbys like Match, Chemistry.com and JDate.com to SeniorPeopleMeet.com and ILoveYourAccent.com – there’s a site and “questionnaire” for every walk of life and it’s not slowing down. Even my beloved Liz Lemon joined K-Date.com (the fictional Kraft Foods dating site) on a recent “30 Rock” episode. Sigh.
There’s nothing new about the fact that we live in a digital age where virtually all communication can be done without actually MEETING the person. Not to sound all George Clooney from “Up in the Air”, but have we completely forgotten about the actual face-to-face chemistry that gets lost in digital connection?
Eternal, or Ethereal?
All that aside, maybe I’m not that relatable for the sake of this argument – I’m lucky enough to have a life partner and still old-fashioned enough to write handwritten thank you notes. And sometimes I can’t help but think about that (actually pretty good looking) couple on the eHarmony commercials. They own a store together, seem pretty in love and found this all through e-mails and “connecting” digitally. We’re led to believe they’re now married and still run their little boutique hand-in-hand, all while wearing matching denim. It’s not a bad image to shoot for.
So what ended up happening to Alex? After a final nail-in-the-coffin email from a spelling-challenged man named “Bobola” followed by a six week dating hiatus, Alex finally re-entered the world of online dating and accepted her first Match.com date a few weeks ago.
She had a really great time and will be going on a second date.
Mind Over Manners
Since moving to California, where everyone has smart phones, I’ve long been stifling mild irritation with friends who, at dinner, would have their iPhones or BlackBerry’s out doing God-knows-what for minutes at a time. Could you really be that bored with the conversation and company that you would care to check Facebook again?
Social grace is a dying art. While the practices of manners and etiquette are seemingly lost on the digi-generates of this world – looking at you Hannah Montana fans – those of us that can recall our parents telling us to chew with our mouths closed and to use “please” and “thank you,” should figure something out in order to fight off this trend that threatens our last few shreds of civility. Our increasingly mobile selves, egged on by our much-beloved mobile devices, need to remember our manners.
In a panicked effort to reverse what I see as an impending doom of a lack of interpersonal connection and epidemic of self-involvement, I asked an expert for some guidelines here.
Mindy Lockard is an etiquette consultant based in Eugene, Oregon who runs a business, blog and a brand around all things manners and gentility and wouldn’t know you it, her pet peeve is “cell phones ringing in pubic.” Her online magazine, ManneroftheMonth.com, is an interactive publication that teaches manners and etiquette to everyday users as well as industry professionals. Mindy will take us beyond the norms of expectations, and to the polished heights of social graces. These are her words of wisdom.
Using Intelligence When Using Your Smart Phone
When I teach my “Cell Phone 101″ class to teens new to the mobile phone world, I often reflect – like my grandparents telling the story of walking up hill to school in 5 feet of snow – about the first cellular phone my mother had. This cellular relic would not be recognizable today since it came with its own case, was the size of a small piece of luggage, and had to be plugged into the cigarette lighter. Much has changed in the world of technology since those days in the early nineties, but while the jumbo models of the early nineties have slimmed down to tiny all-in-one devices, the value of those we are talking to or around hasn’t changed.
Occasions and events when it’s inappropriate
“Can you hear me now … ?” This infamous line from a commercial has become synonymous with the cellular phone industry, and the answer from those standing around us while we talk on our phones is, “YES. WE CAN HEAR YOU!” Keeping our smart phone conversations to a minimum in public places is the minimal amount of respect toward those near us. Even if we are surrounded by strangers, we should be mindful of their personal ear space. Step outside if you must take a call. In an airport or other setting where you can’t go outside, do your best to get away and take the call in an area that isn’t densely populated.
Texting, checking e-mail, Tweeting or updating status…
Public spaces are the best place to text because texting allows us to communicate without disrupting those around us. Of course, texting during a presentation or performance is inappropriate and disrespectful – it communicates to the performers or speakers that you aren’t interested in their efforts. During a movie, the lights on a phone and the clicking of buttons can be very distracting to fellow moviegoers. If you have to text, remove yourself from the performance and take care of your communication. Or, even better, save your communication until the end when you can go outside and return the call.
Texting, checking e-mail, Tweeting or updating status in front of other’s faces
Typing into our phones in front of others is just as disrespectful as talking on the phone in front of them. Even checking your phone to read the message should be avoided. Don’t try to hide your communication under the table or out of sight. Even if the phone isn’t visible, the top of your head while you text is, and the person in front of you will not be fooled. Just because the technology is easy and accessible doesn’t mean it should not be used with respect and discretion.
Making calls
When making a call, be prepared! Using smart phones makes it easier to conduct business in situations when you are not entirely focused because you are driving or out in public. Think before you make a call. Have all necessary information available. The sound of shuffling paper or delayed speech because you have lost focus will give the impression that you are disorganized or don’t care.
Remember to always ask at the beginning of the phone conversation, “Is this a good time?” or “Do you have 5 minutes to answer a couple of questions?” Asking about time or giving the amount of time you need will help you and the caller accomplish the tasks at hand.
Taking calls
If you are in the company of another person or in a situation where you can’t easily focus or don’t have the necessary materials available, ask the caller if you can call them back. Schedule a time that works well for both of you, then call when you say you will call.
When you take a call, stop and focus on the person calling. Always have paper and pen available to take notes, so when you return to the office, you will have the necessary documentation.
Should it be allowed at meals?
When dining or meeting face-to-face with another individual, turn your smart phone off unless you are expecting an emergency phone call. (By the way, your afternoon plans are not an emergency.) If you know you have an appointment at one o’clock and are leaving a message for a friend, tell the friend that you will be unavailable between one and two o’clock. Putting those in our presence “on hold” by taking a call non-verbally communicates that they are not as important as the person on the phone. Even if you ask the person in your presence if they mind and that person politely says, “It’s fine,” chances are they do mind and are merely trying to be polite.
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Please regard these with a “one step at a time” kind of attitude. It’s worth it – manners and etiquette are very becoming on you.
Park(ing) Day 2008
So, imagine walking over to your seventh-floor window in your downtown San Francisco office, taking a peek at the business below and finding a park, complete with benches and grass, suddenly erected on the side of the street … Mission Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city.
Yeah, kinda weird. Turns out it was a stunt repeated in cities all over the world, called Park(ing) Day. Pretty cool, actually. It started in San Francisco three years ago as a guerilla project done by REBAR, a local artists group, as a way to draw attention to the need for more public space in cities. The idea flourished and went global. I took the opportunity to interview Jake Gilchrist, a project manager with the Trust for Public Land, who was manning the Mission Street site to find out a bit more about the project:
LaunchSquad goes A-List
LaunchSquad client Barely Political is the producer of the Obama Girl series of viral videos, among other work. (You can view the latest Obama Girl release, The Incredible McCain Girl here.) The first Obama Girl clip (I Got a Crush… on Obama) was released in June, 2007. In it, Amber Lee Ettinger, the Obama Girl, lip-syncs to a song praising presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. The video became insanely popular and has been viewed by over 50 million people. Amber, as Obama Girl, rocketed into pop culture consciousness and appeared on shows like Saturday Night Live and national publications like People Magazine. As a result, cable network Bravo nominated her as the Internet’s top “Cebwebreity” at their first awards show, the Bravo A-List awards, which aired last night on the cable channel. Here’s a look behind the scenes.
Future of Marketing, Thy Name Is Baron
Viral + celebrities + humor = The future of marketing.
Two brilliant YouTube videos have been making the rounds the past two weeks that are fantastic examples of how to use viral marketing – one overt, the other more subtle. But both use the above formula sublimely.
The first is a pretty ingenious piece of cross-promotion for iBeatYou.com, a competition-based social network started by NBA star, entrepreneur and LaunchSquad hero Baron Davis. The clip features Baron and Adam Sandler as Zohan, the title character from his new movie, in a staring contest. It’s really funny
(Why is Baron a LaunchSquad hero? Well, that’s pretty obvious.)
The second doesn’t actually mention a brand by name – but is for Nike – stars Kobe Bryant and the “Jackass” guys, well, doing stupid stuff. Also very funny:
So, what’s the common denominator here? 2.8 million. That’s the total number of views these videos have gotten for only the nominal cost of producing these videos. How’s that for effective? Millions of people – engaged users who sought this content out – saw these ads and they cost literally nothing. Just a bit of star power and creativity.
I was at the Under The Radar conference in Mountain View earlier this week and there was an interesting discussion amongst a panel of Internet advertising execs about why companies haven’t abandoned traditional advertising for these types of viral campaigns. The answer was a mix of two factors: First, the there will always be a need, in some manner and in some scale, for traditional advertising; and second, that big companies and agencies are simply addicted to buying advertising. That’s amazing.
Being skeptical of new technology is one thing, but ignoring it because, well, that’s the way you’ve always done it, is just stupid. All it’s going to take is for one of these types of campaigns to totally blow up and all the sudden, they’ll become the norm – I’m sure advertising on television was scary for a while back in the early 1950s. Until then, it’ll be pretty easy to spot the savvy companies. Just visit YouTube.
Crowdsourcing: The Final Frontier at the UC-Berkeley Space Sciences Lab
Whether being used to locate billions of dollars in gold for savvy mining companies or tracking online contributions to Barack Obama’s campaign it appears that my esteemed colleague Chris was correct in dubbing 2008 the year of the crowd.
I was so intrigued by the idea of successfully enlisting random strangers to do important and interesting things that I did what I do whenever something incites my cat-like curiosity. I looked up “crowdsourcing” in wikipedia.
I was surprised to see that there is an unprecedented crowdsourcing program in action at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab. My friend, Ryan “The Brain” Ogliore, works there, and he was kind enough to offer some insight into his project, AKA, Stardust.
Would you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing?
I’m a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab. I work on NASA’s Stardust mission: a comet-return from a Jupiter family comet called Wild2.
What is Stardust?
The Stardust mission captured cometary particles in a low-density material called aerogel. Before the rendezvous with the comet, the opposite side of the collector was exposed in a part of space where a stream of interstellar dust travels through our solar system. This material has been viewed astronomically before, but never has a solid sample been returned to the lab for study.
What does the Stardust crowdsourcing project entail?
The interstellar dust particles that were collected by Stardust are microscopic, and they make very tiny tracks in the aerogel. To scan the entire surface of the detector would take many person-years of microscope-searching. The detector containing the interstellar tracks was photographed digitally. The logical thing to do, then, would be to program a computer to scan through these digital images and find the tracks.
This turns out to be a very difficult if not impossible problem, because the aerogel contains many imperfections and cracks that would fool an image-recognition algorithm. A person, however, with minimal training, can identify these particle tracks with high accuracy.
So Stardust@home was created as a way to have hundreds of volunteers search the microscope images and identify particle tracks that interstellar dust made in the detector. Using test images randomly given to the volunteers, or “Dusters” as they’ve called themselves, we determined that they were very good at this task.
The volunteers are extremely dedicated, abundant, and talented. Unlike other projects, like SETI@home, which are essentially a large, distributed electronic computer, Stardust@home is a network of human brains doing something that (at this point in time) only human brains can do extremely well.
How long has the program been in place and what have your results been so far?
The project has been going on for a year and a half and we already have something to show for it: last week, three of the candidate interstellar particles, found by our volunteers, were extracted from the detector.
The project’s success is dependent on the work of the volunteers — this is real science, unique and exciting, that was made possible by the “crowds” of passionate people, eager to be involved with the science.
I think this kind of cool space stuff appeals to a lot of people, and the opportunity to actually search for an interstellar needle in a haystack is something people jumped on: every time you log in you can see a piece of never-before-seen galactic material.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
The Stardust@home approach has proven successful and could spawn another image recognition project: instead of looking for interstellar dust, trained eyes can search for hominids.
Thanks a lot, Ryan!
(End of Interview)
Even aside from all of the amazing things that are being accomplished with crowdsourcing, I am constantly impressed by the underlying sentiment from which these projects emanate. More than anything else, I think that crowdsourcing highlights the willingness of people to pitch in and selflessly donate their time based on their desire for excitement, a challenge, or simply to help in whatever manner they are able.
As much as crowdsourcing can accomplish for the outsourcer, the fulfillment and sense of purpose it provides the crowd should not be overlooked or undervalued.
To quote Bill Nye – science rules!
Baby Jesus Gets A GPS for Christmas
GPS And Jesus; did you think the two would ever be mentioned in the same sentence?
I never thought that would happen, but I guess I was wrong.
Recently a baby Jesus was stolen from a nativity scene in Bal Harbour, a south Florida community, just north of Miami.
For over six years, local resident Dina Cellini has put up a nativity display complete with a baby Jesus in Bal Harbour’s Founders Circle. The baby Jesus was stolen just three days after Cellini put the nativity scene up this year.
After the baby Jesus was stolen, Cellini went on a local radio show and pleaded for the return of the statue. The thief did not respond.
However, a Cincinnati resident named Jeffrey Harris read about the crime on-line, and came to the rescue by offering to replace the baby Jesus. Harris commented on his donation saying, “Even though I am Jewish, I like the Christmas spirit. I felt bad. How can someone steal a baby Jesus?”
The new baby Jesus arrived last Tuesday, just in time for the Christmas holiday. The baby Jesus was placed into the nativity scene, although not without some new company.
A four-foot plexiglass screen was installed in front of the display that is impossible to reach across. And just to make sure the statue doesn’t turn up missing again, Jesus, Mary and Joseph will all be equipped with GPS tracking devices.
Ultimately I can’t believe someone would want to steal a baby Jesus. Its a very sad state of affairs when you have to embed GPS tracking devices in a nativity scene. But I guess that’s the world we live in. However if someone steals the baby Jesus in the future, officials should be able to locate the thief and the figure relatively quickly.
Once again this story is a great reminder, that technology is becoming more and more a part of our lives; even if it’s being used to track figures of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Cellini may of said it best by commenting, “I don’t anticipate this will ever happen again, but we may need to rely on technology to save our savior.”