relationships

Facebook is irresistible.

Somehow, people just love to commit their latest and innermost happenings to the site. And somehow, those who analyze Facebook postings begin to see patterns in the callous behavior of the callow and cowardly.

David McCandless, a man who likes to make information look pretty in order for it to be understood, concocted a highly romantic picture of relationships on Facebook.

He presented it in August at the TED conference, but it has only now descended from that summit to attract the attention of the great unnoticed.

His methodology was to scrape Facebook for status updates that … Read more

Have you lost hope?

Are you sick of slogging away on sites such as Match.com and eHarmony.com to find the partner of your dreams? Or at least the partner who will put up with your dead lizard collection, your back hair, and your difficult morning breath?

Then perhaps it is time to be honest with yourself. Perhaps it is time to look in the mirror and decide that you should be at the Ugly Bug Ball. Or, more accurately, on it.

The Ugly Bug Ball is a dating site for those who are aesthetically challenged. That is the … Read more

Some relationships end well. Others meet their demise in a hail of emotional bullets during a dawn slaughter.

Algorithms don't always understand this. They have only ever been in a relationships with coders and, well, such bonds are both stable and lifelong.

One should not be surprised, therefore, that Facebook's algorithms have caused many inadequate, fragile humans to gnash teeth, bash walls and smash wedding gifts. You see, the lovely Facebook Photo Memories feature tries to offer you pictorial stimulation of happy times with those you loved.

The trouble was that, for the longest time, it also offered … Read more

Men are misunderstood.

The media, Hollywood, and various other pressure groups have painted them as feral beasts, moved to action and emotion only by the prospect of their target gender's proximity.

Two enterprising tech beings--men, as it happens--decided at South by Southwest Interactive to further this perception of male neanderthalia. Jeff Hodsdon and Danny Trinh, then both at Digg, created a service that collated all those useful Foursquare check-ins in order to inform those who might be interested of the volume of women in any one place.

They did it as a joke. They were mocking all the … Read more

In case you believe that the Web is only being used to cement relationships of a commercial nature, here is a tale that might move you to genuine feeling. Or even to making a YouTube video about the long-lost, ever-missed love of your life.

Kelly Summers, a 53-year-old woman from Nottinghamshire, England, felt the cold chill of a British winter when her boyfriend left her. What made it more painful was that it was actually July. She could have gone to the local pub, sniffled a little over a snifter and poured out her feelings. She could have phoned her … Read more

There is now ample reason to believe that the mere existence of Facebook may cause human beings to do things that they know they shouldn't. Such as poke people and send them dead fish, or whatever virtual beings it is that people send to each other.

Somehow, the temptation seems too great, the user interface too attractive, and the immediacy of the communication just too powerful for anyone to resist.

As evidence, might I bring you the alleged behavior of Harry William Bruder from Florida? According to a report from the Pasco Sheriff's Office, Bruder, an employee of … Read more

There are times, I am sure, when you believe your car is talking to you. Your lawn mower too, no doubt. These machines sometimes groan and squeal as if to say "Ease up, big boy" or "Honey, I have a headache."

I have to tell you, though, that these messages are all in your mind. Machines do not have feelings. They will never truly love you.

Well, all except one. A bike called Precious.

Precious has been fitted with all sorts of clever sensors that reveal the bike's thoughts and feelings at any given moment. As Precious rides along, the sensors send the average of their readings by text message back to servers that analyze the true emotional soul of this extraordinary machine.

This analysis leads, it being the modern world, to tweets at Twitter.com/yesiamprecious. Did I mention that Precious is currently on a 3-month journey from the East Coast of America to the West, in aid of Livestrong? Well, I should have, because it makes for some fascinating understanding of how a machine's brain and emotions really work.… Read more

In a world in which no holds are barred and no stone is only warmed by the sun on one side, one can only lift up one's heart at the merest sign of an antidote.

How beautiful, then, that one faithful husband and wife, Lety and Jose Colin, decided to create YouAndMeArePure.com.

Perhaps it is not the most catchy URL you have ever come across. However, it is a site with the purest of intentions. It exists to bring virgins into contact with virgins. No, not like that. At least, not until they are married (a feat the … Read more

The concept of marriage, as I understand it, is a one-at-a-time affair.

You promise to stay with someone forever--that forever being normally between 5 and 10 years--after which you get divorced and subsequently make the same promises to someone else.

So I am rocked to my Converses by the story of a woman who feared that her husband had already strayed from his eternal promise. Lynn France decided to endure the modern form of detection in order to find out whether her suspicions were founded.

Yes, she logged on to Facebook. There, typed in the name of the woman to … Read more