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California Superior Court Judge Ann Jones rejected eHarmony's attempt to dismiss a class action which deals with discrimination against gays. The jury trial is set to start February 1, 2010 and will take place in the Superior Court in Los Angeles. The Judge found that eHarmony had not presented any law that allowed the company to refuse to serve gays and lesbians at their main eHarmony dating site. The lead plaintiff in the class action is graduate student Nate Cardin. He attempted to use eHarmony in 2006 and when he could not and asked why, he received a form letter explaining that eHarmony is only for heterosexual relationships. Nate filed a class action in 2007 and is represented by the civil rights law firm of Schneider Wallace Cottrell Brayton Konecky LLP and the Law Offices of Jeremy Pasternak.

eHarmony did recently disclose that they had received over 3,000 email complaints from people who had visited eHarmony to find a relationship with someone of the same sex but was denied service. Previously eHarmony had made a deal with the New Jersey Attorney General and had opened up the dating site Compatible Partners to serve gay singles (see Story). This class action argues that eHarmony does not give "equal treatment of patrons in all aspects of the business".

In a surprising move, eHarmony is having a Free Communication Event (not weekend) starting Wednesday October 21 to, and including Sunday October 25. Normal free communication weekends at eHarmony are usually only 4 days long and start the Thursday or Friday. With this next one 5 days long I am sure eHarmony is bracing for the surge of new members.

This eHarmony communication event allows all members to not only review their matches but communicate with them as well for free. The only option you can't use is FastTrack. FastTrack allows members to bypass the 4 step guided communication process and go instantly to email messages.

This is Free Communication Weekend number 20 for eHarmony. The last one was held in September on the Labour Day weekend (see Story).

Read our eHarmony review for more details on if this is the ideal dating and matchmaking service for you.

Canadian singles will be celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend and that can only mean one thing... 😉

eHarmony Canada is having a Free Communication Weekend! This means all members will be able to not only review matches for free but they can communicate with them as well. Trying out eHarmony.ca to be matched and talk to members has never been easier.

The last free weekend for eHarmony Canada members was held the Labour Day long weekend in September (see Story).

If you would like more information on this matchmaking service, check out our eHarmony review. User reviews and ratings of eHarmony are also available on this page.

eHarmony has extended the expiry dates of the coupon codes for two of their more popular promotions. Both of these coupon codes expire on December 31, 2009.

eHarmony Coupon #1

eHarmony Coupon #2

These coupon codes are valid only on the eHarmony Canada (eHarmony.ca) and eHarmony United States (eHarmony.com) dating sites. Read our review of eHarmony for more information about this online matchmaking service.

We just got word that eHarmony in Australia (eHarmony.com.au) is having a free communication weekend starting today, Friday October 2nd, and ending Monday October 5th, 2009.

Not only can all members (including free ones) review matches for free but you can communicate with them as well. Just remember if you are a new non paying member, don't use the guided communication FastTrack option. This option is not available for free during this promotion and you would lose the ability to communicate with this member. For those of you who have not used eHarmony before, the FastTrack option allows you to skip the 4 step guided communication process and permits you to go ahead and send a email message right away to your match.

The last eHarmony Australia Free Communication Weekend was held at the end of August (see Story).

Read our review of eHarmony and find out why Australian singles have made this a very popular matchmaking service.

To power their complex matching algorithms, eHarmony relies on four database and data warehousing products.

• The very popular and open source MySQL database server.
• Oracle Database.
• Data warehousing appliances from Netezza Inc.
• Hadoop, a open source data crunching application which divides work among a large number of computers.

eHarmony uses Orcale to do the initial matching after a new member signs up. For the behind the scenes processing, eHarmony uses a 50 node Hadoop cluster. Since moving to Hadoop, eHarmony has seen 4 to 6 times sped improvement in how long it takes to perform matching calculations on a large scale.

All this technology is controlled by eHarmony's main technical team, which includes 40 engineers based at the Los Angeles headquarters. eHarmony also has hired a number of development firms throughout Europe, which has doubled the number of engineers working for them.

To find out more about the technology that powers eHarmony, read ComputerWorld. For more on the dating site itself, check out some of our reviews of eHarmony.