INFOWORLD — May 12 — Google continued extending its reach beyond the PC this week by acquiring social networking service Dodgeball.com; a grad-school project started at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. The service lets users "check in" their location at a bar, club, restaurant, or other local gathering spot, then transmits that information as a text message to the mobile phones of selected other Dodgeball.com users in the area. The goal is to spark in-person connections among friends, acquaintances and friends-of-friends. "As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken dodgeball about a far as we can alone. We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really 'got' what we were doing — that is until we met Google. The people at Google think like us. They looked at us in a 'You're two guys doing some pretty cool stuff, why not let us help you out and let's see what you can do with it' type of way." He and Rainert will remain with the company and begin work on new features.
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Mark Brooks: Wireless online dating is coming… Heck, it's already here. Webdate.com has the nicest application I've seen so far. Yahoo is available on Blackberry now. Check out the mobile dating internet conference, San Francisco in July, www.idate2005.com. (Member of the press? Contact me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com)