Relationships

I checked out the virtual world, Second Life, a year or two ago and liked what I saw but, I have such a busy life in the real world I didn't do much more than try it out a few times. Much like MMO's (massively multiplayer online game) if you let it, these programs can take up all of your time.

I first heard about a Second Life wedding on our local radio station and after a bit of research I found an online article about it too at the Telegraph. The story is about Kira and Rik, or should I say Kristen and Steve (their real names). It talks about how these two met online in Second Life and the eventually virtual wedding.

The bizarre event was the culmination of five months of cyber-dating, during which time Kirsten and Steve’s avatars met in Second Life, struck up a virtual rapport, had virtual sex and moved in together, virtually.

It's a pretty unreal story, especially because they both had spouses in the real world.

After more research I was able to find a dating service in Second Life (see AvaDate). In 2007 they had 75 members looking for love. Not a huge selection for a virtual world with 15 million accounts and 38,000 residents logged in at any one time (according to Wikipedia). There are some online dating services trying to create a virtual dating world within their website (the most popular one being OmniDate.com). It is an interesting idea but I am not sure how well it is being received. Personally, I would be more inclined to use web cameras and see the real person instead.

The Dating Tips Section allows you to read up on useful tips about online dating and being single in the internet age. This will include such topics as writing a good profile, how to get noticed online and, picking the right dating site for you. If you would like to see an article not showen here or have a dating question that needs an answer, please contact us.

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A major complaint of almost all paid online dating sites are the subscription auto-renewal policies. In most cases, once a membership is purchased for a dating service, the auto-renewal is enabled. This means that once your subscription is expired it is automatically renewed and usually for the same time period as you bought previously. Usually you will be charged at the current price of the subscription. Some dating sites like Match.com don't require any notice to turn off auto membership renewals but, some like eHarmony require at least 24 hours notice. This would mean if you decided to turn off the membership auto renew feature at eHarmony on the day your membership is set to expire it would be too late and according to their Terms of Service you would be charged for the new renewed subscription. Other dating sites may even ask for a week or more of notice. I've also heard of some dating sites requiring you to speak to customer service before your account renewal will be turned off.

The best thing here to do is once you have signed up for a dating site and paid for a membership is to turn off the auto renew. This way you will not forget. There are benefits to this too, even if plan to continue the membership. When your membership is close to expiring most dating sites will let you know by email and usually offer you a discount for your continued subscription. Very few let you know when your membership is about to expire if you have the subscription auto renew feature enabled. Most dating sites auto renewal feature can be disabled in the Account Settings (or My Account, etc...) section of the site. I've never had this problem (others have reported such issues) but, as a precaution I would also double check that your subscription auto renew remains unchecked.

One other thing you should know about. Some dating sites may renew your membership if you continue to use the dating service after your subscription has expired. This can easily happen by receiving a message from a member and you go online and reply to it.

Always double check the Terms of Use (or User Agreement, etc...) of the dating site if the auto renew policy is not clear when you buy a subscription. Most dating sites don't make it difficult to turn this off but there are always a few bad apples. Other industry subscription services have similar policies when it comes to renewals. Just take a look at any TV, Internet or cell phone contract. In fact I would say these industries are worse in most cases. That said, dating sites should have subscription auto renewals deactivated by default. Enabling this automatically in a way is like admitting their service may not work for you.

Related Story: Dating Sites Free Trials and Credit Card Numbers

Red has long been associated with love, romance and Valentine's Day. There seems to be a reason for this, according to a recent University of Rochester study. The color red appears to boost a woman's attractiveness to men. With the study:

... volunteers were told they had $100, shown the picture of their "date", then asked how much of that money they were prepared to spend. On average, wearing red meant a more expensive night out, and in general, a higher rating of attractiveness.

The study concluded that there is clear evidence that the color red on woman makes men feel more amorous at the subconscious level.

For the full story visit the BBC News.

In mid October we reported about (see Story) Perfect Match's Dr. Pepper Schwartz on the Bonnie Hunt Show. She was helping Bonnie's friend Holly by reviewing her profile and pictures and giving her some pointers to improve her online dating adventure. Starting last week and for the next 5 weeks Holly and her online dating experiences with PerfectMatch.com will be regularly featured on the Bonnie Hunt Show. Holly currently has 3 matches she really likes and can't decide which one to go on a date with. Voice your opinion and vote on which 3 of these PerfectMatch.com guys Holly should go out with.

If you want to find out what all th fuss is about with this dating service, read our Perfect Match review.

I get several emails a day from dating related website owners asking me to take a look at their service. I do for the most part take a quick peek and I find most of them don't stand out.

MeetWays is different. It is a free service that offers a useful dating tool. You enter two addresses (or zip/postal codes) and it will find the halfway point between them. It will then list restaurants, coffee shops or whatever you specify on a graphical map. This tool is integrated in a large part with Google Maps so it works for more than 25 different countries. On the map you get your 2 red points which represent the addresses you entered, the middle red address point and then a number of yellow points which are the businesses in the area that are offering the service you specified.

Meetways doesn't display many of the smaller related businesses in the area and only shows businesses which are buying ad space from Google. This is not necessary a bad thing since a large number of businesses are represented. This tool does work well and can be used more than just for dating, client or business lunch meetings come to mind. Think of this tool as an interactive yellow pages.

Visit MeetWays to try out the tool for yourself.