Category: Uncategorized

ASSOCIATED PRESS — Aug 3 — White Buffalo Ventures appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying it had complied with anti-spam laws and argued that the University of Texas violated its rights by filtering out 59,000 e-mails in 2003. The 5th Circuit panel found that the federal anti-spam laws do not pre-empt the university’s policy and that the policy is permissible under the First Amendment.  The Austin-based service had legally obtained the addresses from the university, but the university started blocking the e-mail messages saying White Buffalo was part of a larger spam problem that had crashed the computer system.  UT issued a cease and desist order, but White Buffalo refused to comply. So UT blocked the e-mail messages.

Mark Brooks: Shouldn’t the students decide?

PRWEB — July 28 — With DatingShare daters download free peer to peer dating client software. Users can play games like Tetris against online competitors, choose an avatar and dive into a chat room or use audio and video chat. ShareGroup is an internet business company. They founded DatingShare in 2005. Run by ShareGroup.

Mark Brooks: P2P is quite the leap of faith for online daters.  I filled in my profile and chose 'athelatic' as my figure, selected from the games; battleship, chess, tictac…noone available to play with.  Noone on IM, in fact, not too many people to choose from at all.  Nice concept, but here's the kicker…building a great dating site as 10% about the site and 90% about the people.  We're selling people to people.  No people, no product, no go.  Nice concept.

PRWEB — July 28 — With DatingShare daters download free peer to peer dating client software. Users can play games like Tetris against online competitors, choose an avatar and dive into a chat room or use audio and video chat. ShareGroup is an internet business company. They founded DatingShare in 2005. Run by ShareGroup.

Mark Brooks: P2P is quite the leap of faith for online daters.  I filled in my profile and chose 'athelatic' as my figure, selected from the games; battleship, chess, tictac…noone available to play with.  Noone on IM, in fact, not too many people to choose from at all.  Nice concept, but here's the kicker…building a great dating site as 10% about the site and 90% about the people.  We're selling people to people.  No people, no product, no go.  Nice concept.

BUSINESS WIRE — Aug 1 — SmartVideo Technologies today announced that it has entered into a revenue sharing agreement with TheDateZone.com to bring the world of interactive online dating to mobile devices. TheDateZone.com is a Web based dating service that gives men and women the ability to meet and communicate with each other in a safe, controlled environment. Unique to TheDateZone.com is its ability for subscribers to audio and video conference not only from Internet to Internet but from phone to phone and from Internet to phone to anyone, anywhere in the world! ComScore revealed that personals Websites attract 30 million visitors a month in the U.S. alone. Jupiter Research predicts that online dating is expected to grow by 60% by 2008.

Mark Brooks: Mark Thompson, CEO of weAttract.com, said, "jump ahead 10 years, and it will all be video-based."  Webdate.com has the nicest implementation of live video chat in the industry and are coining the term 'webdating' for online video dating.

SEATTLE TIMES — Aug 1 — MSN is planning to boost Spaces' popularity by launching social-networking features this fall. The service could compete with more established services, such as MySpace, Friendster and Orkut.  "You end up with a series of cascading relationships that get further away from you, at least from your closed circle of friends, but they're very important for you," said Blake Irving, a vice president in the MSN division.  Spaces is free, but users must deal with banner advertising at the top of the blogs. Similarly, Microsoft said that it will place some advertising on its Virtual Earth site. FULL ARTICLE @ SEATTLE TIMES

COURIER-JOURNAL — Aug 1 — The Federal Bureau of Prisons site allows visitors to locate inmates in federal prisons anywhere with a few keystrokes. Visit http://www.bop.gov.  Other sites include: WriteAPrisoner.com, Penpals-N-Prison, FriendsBeyondTheWall. Thurman is serving time for murder Kentucky and his ad is posted on WriteAPrisoner.com.  An e-mail from a woman: "I just want you to know that if you do write back I will not judge you because of your current situation. I know what it's like to have made bad choices. I've been there. I will tell you more when you write back, and send you a picture."  The number of U.S. prison inmates has grown to more than 2 million.  Prisoners don't have computer access, and the Web sites only facilitate initial contact.  Afterward, inmates and their pen pals typically exchange cards, letters and telephone calls, and sometimes schedule visits.  The posting of one inmate didn't list his two first-degree rape convictions, according to the Kentucky Online Offender Lookup, or KOOL, a link on the Kentucky Department of Corrections' site. People are fascinated by death-row inmates.  Serial murderers John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy both married women they'd corresponded with before their executions. WriteAPrisoner.com charges $40 for a yearlong ad, and business is booming.  "We average 10,000 visitors a day, and gross about $200,000 a year," said Lovell. "It just keeps growing." 

Mark Brooks: Buyers beware.  Proceed with caution, if you must. 

SACBEE — July 30 — About 43% of people who answered a dating-service survey said they type their date's name into the Google search engine before they go out. And 88% of those people said they wouldn't be bothered if their dates did the same thing.  "It's just a precaution. It's like carrying Mace," said Eidson, who works as a mortgage underwriter. "To me, it's like a mini-background check."

The full article was originally published at Sacbee, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: There are so many people with the same name, Googling is a very rough and ready background check. 

CAPITAL TIMES –July 28 — Madison entrepreneur Dan Chin launched Madcitymatch.com to provide a local option to the various national services. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 9% of those online use dating services. A report out this spring by comScore Networks cited online personals and dating as the fastest growing category of paid Web content, growing 4.4% to $469.5 million from 2003 to 2004.  Chin began Madcitymatch.com after piloting a site aimed at University of Wisconsin-Madison students, Badgermatch.com. Madcitymatch.com has attracted 550 members so far.  He'll add speed dating to Madcitymatch.com's service and is also thinking about background checks.

The full article was originally published at Capital Times, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Cupid.com is taking the regional approach also.

PR WEB — July 25 — Two growing movements are currently sweeping American pop culture – internet social networking and the rise in popularity of poker. A new web site, k9poker.com, attempts to bring these two concepts together.  ComScore reports more than 29.1 million unique visitors to online gambling sites in April, out of a total audience of 165 million. K9Poker.com combines the two concepts in a novel way by helping people connect and become poker buddies.

The full article was originally published at PR Web, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: The community is online and the games are real world.  This site just hooks people up for real world games.  Now if someone can combine online poker and social networking they'll have something.  Has anyone done this yet?