The new polar vortex has made winter come earlier than planned. Before we can enjoy the turn of summer into fall, it seems that many cities across North America have been hit with snow, sleet and rain.

Just because the weather isn’t cooperating doesn’t mean you have to depend on bars and movie theatres as your places to go. Winter dating, especially around the holidays, is anything but boring! Don’t despair because you can’t take a nice bike ride together or have a picnic by the beach. Instead, embrace the cold with these fun date ideas:

Go wine tasting. Winter is the perfect time to find a nice local spot offering flights of the latest fall wines. If you live near wineries, you’re in luck! For most of us that don’t, local wine shops and bars often offer “tasting” nights and events for those who want to improve their palettes.

Take a cooking class. Can’t get warm? Take your date to a cooking class where you take fresh, local ingredients and learn to make something new and delicious. The best part? It warms you up and you get to share a hard-earned gourmet meal together as a reward.

Visit a tree farm. No matter your religious preferences, there’s something magical about visiting tree farms. The smell of pine can be soothing, and offer you a chance to enjoy the outdoors – followed by a warm cocktail or hot chocolate.

Go ice skating. Outdoor ice rinks are all the rage when winter hits. You can even find makeshift ice rinks in parking lots across Los Angeles, where temperatures rarely dip below 50 degrees. Check your local listings, and feel free to have fun and be a kid again. Isn’t this the stuff romance is made of?

Volunteer together. Good works can bring you and your date closer, and make your evening together more meaningful. Check local food banks, non-profits and religious organizations in your city to find out what you can do this holiday season.

Be a tourist. Visit a new art exhibit or the local history museum you never get around to checking out, just because it’s never on your to-do list. Explore the place you live – there is probably something you didn’t expect.  

Indoor rock climbing. Who said you can’t try outdoor activities when it’s snowing outside? Indoor rock climbing is a great way to get that adrenaline rush, and to enjoy a bit of a workout on your date.

Making s’mores. You don’t have to be around a campfire to enjoy this old favorite. Pull up a cushion by your fireplace (or stove) and roast a couple of marshmallows and some chocolate, a delicious way to spend the evening.

Just as Tinder’s founder Sean Rad was at the top of his game, enjoying the enormous success of his dating app Tinder after two short years on the market - and about to announce the new features offered in the latest version of the app - the board has decided to take away his CEO title.

As reported originally in a cover story for Forbes Magazine, Rad has been demoted to President, his management power greatly reduced for a yet-to-be-determined CEO who will take the reins of Tinder from him. According to Forbes, IAC decided that the company needed a more seasoned CEO (“an Eric Schmidt-like person”) leading it and taking it to the next level of a viable, revenue-generating business, as opposed to the young and green entrepreneur who brought Tinder to its current success. And also, preferably not a CEO tainted with scandal.

When Rad first launched Tinder, he did so with a lot of help from his friend and social trendsetter Justin Mateen. By approaching social influencers at universities (such as fraternity leaders), Mateen managed to get a lot of people using the app quickly, so the user base only grew stronger with time and more than a little PR.

Mateen and Rad built up the company together, but the scandal started when Mateen started dating one of their employees. When that relationship went south, the employee decided to pursue a sexual harassment lawsuit based on angry and inappropriate texts she had received from Mateen, and sued the company. She reportedly walked away with a little over a million dollars, but Mateen and Rad seem to be paying a higher price. Rad was implicated because he was the one who stripped her of her VP title and later “wrongfully terminated” her, according to the lawsuit.

But will all this drama derail Tinder itself? Not likely. The company continues to grow, and the revenue plan for its new premium service – Tinder Plus – rolls out this month with two new features for paying customers. The basic Tinder app will remain free.

The new version includes a travel feature called Passport, which lets users journey around the globe, swiping through matches in various cities instead of having to choose one based on their GPS location. The second feature is something users have been requesting from the beginning – an “undo” button that lets them revisit profiles they’d already rejected. Everyone deserves a second chance, right?

The company plans to launch another feature in the near future called “Places,” which will allow users who frequent the same places to meet over the app.

Will Tinder maintain the enthusiasm of its investors and the public at large after Rad steps down? Will customers be willing to pay for the benefits of Tinder Plus? We’ll have to wait and see.

Let’s face it, we human beings are visual creatures. When you meet someone new in person, what’s the first thing you do? Most likely, you look at him and decide on how attractive he is. Would you pursue him if you had an opportunity?

This type of superficial behavior is pretty standard. Most of us assess and judge others according to their appearance. The soaring popularity of apps like Tinder give us evidence that even in the digital age when we can get more information on almost anybody we meet if we just took the time to Google them – we prefer to say yes or no based on their looks.

Case in point: in the two years Tinder has been on the market, smartphone sales have gone up dramatically, which means more people have access to the app. The statistics speak for themselves. Tinder processes more than a billion swipes daily, matches more than 12 million people in the same amount of time (only a fraction of the overall swipes are mutual however), and though the company won’t release information on the number of users, sources say it could be as large as 50 million active users.

More important than people signing up for Tinder is the fact that they use it – as regularly (if not more often) as other popular social media like Facebook or Pinterest. According to a recent article in The New York Times, on average, people log in to the app 11 times a day. Women spend as much as 8 and a half minutes on it, while men spend 7.2 minutes (sorry guys). If you add it up, that’s almost 90 minutes per day.

But is the phenomenon of Tinder purely based on our basic animal instincts? Are we really only looking for someone who is physically attractive, or who embodies a physical ideal of some sort?

Maybe not. Many of Tinder’s users (mostly men) are looking to rogue apps like Tinderoid that manipulate Tinder’s database so they can “swipe right” to multiple profiles at once without even looking at a single photo. They are looking to increase their odds of matching with a woman, rather than looking for someone they find physically appealing. But what is the goal - is it just to hook up with more women? Maybe, but that’s another matter.

Tinder is a vehicle for meeting more people, and works a lot faster than your traditional online dating process. Maybe it’s appeal is not just about the photos, but instead due to the vast quantity of people you can “pick and choose” anytime, anywhere - and how quickly you can match and meet up.

The real question is: does it improve the overall dating experience? The jury is still out on that one.

Somewhere along the line, every argument in favor of mobile dating apps claims they've made it easier than ever to find a relationship (even just a one-night relationship, if that's what you're looking for). Everyone loves the idea of a quick and easy matchmaking process, and why wouldn't they? In our era of short attention spans, we expect everything to be as fast and convenient as possible.

On the other hand, plenty have said that all that swiping left and right doesn't actually amount to much. Dating apps have taken a complex, time-consuming process and wrapped it up in a package that requires almost no thought or energy. Can something so easy accurately recreate the intricate experience of meeting and falling for someone? Can true, lasting romance ever come from a dating app?

Well, let's see.

When it comes to popularity, dating apps certainly aren't hurting. A current Radian 6 analysis shows that buzz surrounding dating apps is very high, with a total of 2,094,611 mentions. Breaking it down, Tinder comes out on top (1,383,012) followed by Badoo (505.611), Grindr (137,779) and Twoo (63,733). The vast majority of what is being said is positive, so users are clearly finding something of merit in this modern-day, digital approach to dating.

Looking deeper, we start to see another trend. The consensus amongst users seems to be that dating apps are primarily used for hooking up rather than serious romance. Search the keywords “love” and “lust” and you'll find that the latter is more closely associated with app-based interactions. Grindr, naturally, leads the pack with 86.3% “lust” to 13.7% “love” mentions. Tinder takes second place with 81.3% and 18.7%, respectively.

When another sentiment analysis is performed, it's revealed that negative sentiment is higher for lust-related interactions and a higher positive sentiment is associated with interactions focused on finding true love.

So is there any grounding to the perception that dating services are just for hookups? Seeing as there's strong negative sentiment attached to the lust angle, most seem to be opposed to using dating apps for casual sex. Sure, it's out there, but more singles using mobile dating services are looking for a happily ever after that lasts longer than one night.

Admittedly, it might not be something you find right away, but hey – when is it? Sorting through the weirdo's takes plenty of time online too, and just as much time in person, so embrace it. It's all part of the process and once you have what you're looking for, it won't matter where you found it.

The operator of a dating site for people with sexually transmitted diseases is facing a $16.5m pay out after losing a privacy case.

The site in question in PositiveSingles, a dating service for singles around the world with herpes, HPV, HIV / AIDS, hepatitis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and other STDs. Back in 2011, an unnamed claimant sued the parent company, SuccessfulMatch, as part of a class action case.

SuccessfulMatch offers an affiliate scheme for new dating services as well as running a number of niche dating sites of its own. It offers both software and databases that contain the details of "hundreds of thousands of profiles" registered to its existing services – and therein lies the problem.

In the 2011 lawsuit, the owner of PositiveSingles was accused of sharing pictures and profile information from the site with other dating services, despite promising privacy and confidentiality. It was revealed that PositiveSingles is one of more than a thousand different websites that all funnel members' personal information into a single database that does, in fact, share that information with third parties.

The plaintiff acknowledged that upon completion of the registration page, members' are given a link to the Terms of Service which state that profile details – including details about HIV and other STD statuses - may be shared with other sites in the SuccessfulMatch network. By posting a profile, he said, users agree to those terms.

But he also acknowledged that few users ever read the Terms of Service, because...well...who does?

A jury found PositiveSingles guilty of breaking local consumer laws, fraud, malice and oppression. The company is now faced with paying approximately $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $15 million in punitive damages. In a hearing on October 29, 2014, the court indicated that it will issue an injunction prohibiting the illegal conduct and declared that three provisions of the Terms of Service are unconscionable.

This story follows a previous lawsuit filed by two women who attempted to sue SuccessfulMatch on similar grounds earlier in the year. A judge dismissed their claims in April after, saying they had failed to specifically allege they had actually read the Terms of Service they claimed were misleading. Despite the judge's dismissal, the women filed an amended claim and the case is still active.

Most folks are probably content to hit Like buttons and swipe right without knowing how any of it actually works. But if you're like me, you can't help being curious about what goes on behind the scenes.

For those of us in the second category, there's this recent video from David Gevorkyan, principle software engineer at eHarmony. In the hour-long talk, Gevorkyan describes how eHarmony creates the highly compatible matches it's known for, and how the company leverages Big Data technologies to accomplish that goal.