It's free communication weekend again at eHarmony

An important reminder if you intend to take advantage of this special promotion, read the fine lines in the email announcing the event:

Free Communication Weekend begins Thursday, December 27th and ends Sunday, December 30th at 11:59pm PT. Does not include Photos, FastTrack or Secure Call communication.

Good luck getting to Open communication by Sunday.

I'll refer you the previous posts I've written about eHarmony's Free Communication Weekend, take some time to read the comments also. I'm calling this collection "All you need to know about eHarmony's free communication weekends or Almost".

• Free communication weekend at eHarmony
• Not-so-free Communication weekend at eHarmony
• Still free communication weekend at eHarmony
• Another Free communication weekend at eHarmony

I probably wont be writing much about eHarmony's free communication weekends anymore. Really I don't see what more I can say on the subject unless they apply changes to the way it's done maybe an extension? Five days instead of four? How about allowing FastTrack? Just a suggestion. I wonder why they had to come up with such a long name, it sounds so formal I've thought about using FCW instead...

Yahoo chat rooms or free chat with bots

Back in August, Yahoo! decided to use word verification also called captcha, in order to fight bots in Yahoo! Chat. I suppose it was the most trivial solution available to them. It's a big annoyance to have to enter the distorted word each time you go to a room. It's a nightmare for room hoppers like myself.

If you regularly go in to one room or only a the same few rooms all the time then you shouldn't mind the captcha. When Yahoo first rolled it out, the rooms were emptier cleaner. And the common chatter was wondering what bot creators are doing now that captcha was keeping their bots from invading Yahoo! chat? Well they were getting prepared to fight back. Once they found a way around the captcha they must have praised Yahoo!'s name for allowing them to be even more present in the chat rooms than they've ever been in the past.

There were days when you would quickly change rooms when the one you landed in happened to be occupied by bots only. Now before you get into a room you say a quick prayer hoping that you wont land in a bot-only room. Because you fear having to go through captcha again, again and again before you feel tired of trying to chat and never being able to actually do it.


To know how the Yahoo chatters feel about the change read the comments to a blog post announcing the captcha on the Yahoo! messenger official blog. I also left a comment there. If you don't want to leave my blog for the Yahoo messenger blog (I love you!) here's the comment I left there

"The latest commenters have summarized what Yahoo! chat room users have been experiencing, inconvenience with the captcha and annoyance with bots. Word verification is never fun but people accept to go through it when they feel that it’s helpful in fighting spam. Real people have to endure word verification every single time they want to go in a room (and not just once while entering Yahoo Chat which is how I think it should work), added to that they still have the same problem with bots. I didn’t like the captcha solution when the bots hadn’t yet found a way around it but since most chatters felt better to have clean rooms I cheered with them thinking the days of bot filled rooms were over. Unfortunately it’s not the case and I think that with the current situation there are two factors driving people away from Yahoo chat, the bots and the word verification. As I like to say, I’m a room hopper, when I chat I like to go from room to room doing that with the captcha is discouraging to say the least."

Image taken form blog.messenger.yahoo.com

What I'm called

Except for "sir", most of the ways people call me online are quite common and expected even though they aren't necessarily appreciated. I'm called sweety, honey, hon, dude, amigo, friend, yaar, baby, maam, sir, black beauty, mon ami, marguerite, margrrite, jaz, jasmine, jasmin -and a few others that I wont tell- . At some point, I figured that "marguerite" was too unusual for my non-French-Speaking friends and I tried pushing mj (m for marguerite and j for jasmin) to make it easy for them but even I had to stop using it except when I leave comments on particular blogs. Now I mostly use Marguerite Jasmin which is completely unoriginal and very formal. How do people call you online?


Join LavaPlace to chat for free

Another Free communication weekend at eHarmony

I wasn't aware of it before but eHarmony has a free communication weekend every once in a while. The latest one will start this Friday. I already wrote might thoughts on the free communication weekend at eHarmony, read it before you join eHarmony to take advantage of this special promotion.

The free communication weekend at eHarmony starts Friday, November 16th and ends Monday, November 19th. I've turned my matching off the last time because my matches did not respond to me at all, I figured it was pointless. In fact I was going to delete my account altogether but just didn't find a way to do so, I may have to write to eHarmony and ask them to do it for me.

Actually instead of going through eHarmony's extremely long sign up processes you should join instead. Sign up and search for people with Open Club membership in your desired area, you can contact them for free. Before you start initiating contact on Worldfriends I suggest you add a photo, a profile with a photo is more likely to get response than one without a photo. Knowing that people with Open Club memberships are likely to receive a whole lot of message you do want to stand out from all the other people contacting the person you're interested in.


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Why you should join Worldfriends today

Googling the people you meet online

Remember Pablo? Well I once googled his name and found out a whole lot of information about him. I found out about the university he went to, his course of study, online projects he was involved with, an interview he had given to a journalist and that rap song he recorded a few years ago! He had no idea there was that much information about him available online by simply performing a Google search for his name.

I've googled the names of many of my online friends and I have found interesting information in many cases. There is one person who had a profile on a site that did not adequately hide its member's pages to the Google spiders and I was able to view information that should only be accessible by logged in members. I actually don't search for people hoping to find information they might be hiding from me but rather I search to find out about their online presence, how they reveal themselves on the internet. Indeed, most of the time the information available about you online is directly provided by non other than yourself, remember that the next time you fill out a form to register to this latest cool new website. It is a common practice for websites you join to make public the information you provide them, at least in part. Many websites do that by default, you have to explicitly tell them not to make your information public for them to make it private.

You need the person's full name to get a sure hit when you search for him tough you can still find the person with his firt/last name only if it's a rare one and if you have other specific elements to add to the query like his location, school or anything really specific that would help you narrow down your search.

You have to keep in mind that many people share the exact same name - in case you find out that the person you're searching for has a criminal history-. Unless there's a photo attached or some other specific personal information, you might not be able to tell for sure whether you've found the exact person you're looking for until you ask him or her about it.

Make friends Worldwide and don't forget to look them up on Google.

Making friends online on dating sites

It may not be obvious but I don't do online dating, on the other hand, I do enjoy meeting people on dating sites, for friendship. The fact is dating sites usually put the most effort and money in marketing compared to "friendship" sites. As a result, they are more visible and usually more attractive than the latter.

Among all the sites to meet people online, dating sites are usually the ones with the most members. Also, I have to say that many so-called dating sites are not exclusively dedicated to matching people up for dating, they usually allow you to specify what type of relationships you are seeking (friendship for example). Even if the website you use does not offer such option you should always be specific in your profile about the type of relationship you are seeking to avoid disappointing anybody who might take the initiative to contact hoping to find more than what you wish to offer.

Make Friends from all over the world at Worldfriends.

What you wish you knew before you started online dating

OnlineDatingTips.org is a free guide to Online Dating. The website claims to "... help you understand online dating better...". Online dating is very popular these days. If you've spent enough time online, chances are, you've create at least one profile on a dating site. If you are among the growing number of people turning to online dating sites to meet people, especially if you are one of those who are willing to pay for online dating services, it's a good idea to gather as much information as possible before making the big jump. There are websites that do just that, give you advice and tips about online dating in general while referring you to specific services in particular. "Online Dating Tips" is one of them.

OnlineDatingTips.org contains a collection of articles all related to dating and more specifically to online dating. It's a neatly designed website with very easy navigation. I like the simplicity of the look and the colors, mostly white and blue. Surprisingly from a site with that theme there aren't many ads for dating sites, only a few that are very well integrated into the site itself. Many of the articles contain practical advice, for instance, there's one about "Online Dating Safety". I recommend starting with that article, it's not a long read, it contains tips that you'd better use. They also have a list of dating services that they recommend.

While I do see the use of such a site, it doesn't seem to be a place where you would want to come regularly. Surely, you might want to bookmark a few articles for further reference but OnlineDatingTips.org is not a blog and there is no indication of when and how often new articles will be added. Since the site is essentially populated by articles and offers no other features, once you've read those that interest you there isn't much left for you to do there.


What I don't like

• Who writes all this? They don't have an About Us page and none of their articles are signed. For all I know those articles could have been taken from somewhere else. For a site that contains only articles it lacks personality, you don't know from whom all those tips are coming from which does not encourage you to take them too seriously.

• Still in Beta. The site seems to still be in its initial phase, some pages are missing like the About Us that I've mentioned above and others are incomplete like the FAQ page which contains no questions at all but rather a call to readers to send in their questions.

• They don't deliver. Though they say that Online Dating tips is a place where "... singles can learn to ropes of dating online and seek out the best dating sites for free.", there aren't any reviews of dating sites or a place where readers can give their input about dating services that they've used in order for those services to be ranked. All they have is a list of a few recommended dating sites but nowhere is it said why those services are recommended instead of the many others available out there.

Recommendations

• Encourage user participation. Overall it doesn't look like a lot of effort has been put in encouraging reader participation in the site. I believe if the readers felt a bit more like they were part of the site, that they could actively contribute in it, they would spend more time there.

• Use user input to rank dating sites. They should provide a way for users to give their input on dating sites they've used, and that input could later be used to build a ranking of various dating sites. I'm sure a feature like that would be very popular.

• Add a form to the Contact page. The Contact page should contain a contact form where people could submit their messages and queries directly an not just an email address to which messages should be sent. The easier the contacting process is, the more likely readers are to actually go through it. I'm sure that if a form was included directly the Contact page they would have had a few question submissions by now for their FAQ page.

• Add a forum. A natural evolution of this site would be the addition of a forum where online daters and people interesting in trying out online dating could discuss, share their experience, and give tips and advice to each other.

Bottom line
OnlineDatingTips.org is a nice site to read but there's nothing to come back regularly for.

This post has been a sponsor post.

I still hate msn messenger?

I was using the MSN messenger 7.0 build 7.0.0816 on my computer running windows 2000.
I tried to log in last week only to have microsoft tell me that I must install the newer version in order to continue MSN. Of course they ask you whether you'd like to do it immediately, if you say no you just can't use MSN. I'm not a big MSN fan anyway, besides I can still chat with my MSN contacts using Yahoo. The YSN messenger may not be a bad idea after all...


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Meeting People Online with Yahoo! Answers

You would like to meet people online but want to avoid using dating sites? Though I will say, there are many decent people on dating sites, but still you might prefer trying something different because you've used every other dating with not much success. Well, you're in luck, there are many other ways beside dating sites to meet people online.

If we eliminate social networking sites -I consider that they should be mainly used to "connect" with people you already know- , there are many other online communities where you can meet with people who share your interest and who knows? You might end up starting a great relationship with one of them.

On Yahoo! Answers, regular people ask all kinds of questions that are answered by other regular people. Think of it as a giant forum where there's always someone to reply to a thread you've started. It's a good place to meet people because you can go through the person's Questions and Answers and know not only his interests but also his opinions and preferences. People contacted me through Yahoo! Answers because they saw that I was in Haiti and need to talk to someone from there. The Yahoo! Answers pages are indexed by search engines so someone who's not even a member can see your answers and your profile. You, your interests and points of views, are exposed to a very large number of people. You can allow people to send you emails through Yahoo! Answers while concealing your email address. You can also allow people to send you instant messages through Yahoo messenger but you have to reveal your Yahoo ID to use that feature.

My story
I've joined Yahoo answers last year. I've succeeded in meeting four people mostly because at some point I specialized myself in answering questions about Haiti and Haitians. Two of those people saw my profile and contacted me directly. Since I'm a Haitian still living in Haiti, and we are apparently not numerous on Yahoo Answer, I've been able to give "valuable" information to people who had questions about my country. Meeting people on Yahoo Answers mostly means that I've stayed in contact with them either through email or instant messaging.


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You enjoy online discussions? Join me on myLot

Well-Wishers

A typical online conversation:

[...]
me: Who are you?
random_chatter: I'm just a well wisher
[...]

The person who gave me that answer may not be a well-wisher but many of my online friends are indeed my well-wishers. I realized it yesterday. So many of my online friends have given me good advice over the years. Even though I don't always follow them...



Chat for free with well-wishers in your area

Facebook, second impression

Facebook - First impression

I know why so many people love Facebook so much, one word "applications". Think of Facebook as a computer with only the operating system. There isn't too much you can do with that but start installing programs, according to your needs, and there's a whole lot you can use your computer for. It's the same, almost, for Facebook. It offers basic social networking features. You can add your photo, have your very own profile page, invite your friends to join your network and send them messages but there's more. Facebook offers the possibility to build applications that will run on Facebook and will do whatever tasks they were designed for.

I didn't realize how big a deal Facebook applications were until I created my blueNile wish list and was offered the option to add it to Facebook. As long as you're logged into both sites, all you have to do is go through a few easy steps and voilà! Your shiny wish list shows up on your Facebook profile page. It might seem like no big deal for you but I would like to see you try and add that same wish list to your blog for instance, or to your profile on Orkut, hi5 or Friendster.

The last time I tried adding a wish list to Orkut, it allowed me to add the url but every time I tried viewing it from within Orkut it kept sending me to the store's homepage. If you are an online seller you probably should make a Facebook application that allows your customers not only to add their wish list to their profile, but also shows off the items they've purchased from you. By the way, did you know that Facebook used to be called theFacebook?

Facebook me!

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Meeting People Online part I

Meeting People Online can be dangerous

I will never say it enough, you need to be careful when you decide to meet with someone you only know online. I've read a few stories recently about offline meetings that turned into tragedy. A 19 year old woman disappears after meeting with man she met online. A pregnant woman was abducted by a teen age girl she met on myspace. It seems the teen girl was going to cut the baby boy out and pretend she's hers. As you can see the danger does not only come from the men you meet online it may come from the women as well.

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They are preying on your kids

My eHarmony matches don't like me

The free communication weekend is over at eHarmony. I sent questions to a total of 14 matches and the only response I received was from one who didn't wish to communicate with me anymore. Not a single one of my other matches responded. I should have a look at my profile and see what I wrote there, maybe that's what's scaring them away from me...

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Meeting People the second time around
Not-so-free Communication weekend at eHarmony
Still free communication weekend at eHarmony

Still free communication weekend at eHarmony

I initially thought that the free communication weekend at eHarmony would end today, Sunday, but I didn't read the "fine print" in the email they sent me. The free communication weekend will actually end on Monday at 11:59pm PT. That detail was brought to my attention by an anonymous person who left this comment that I found very informative and useful. If you intend to take advantage of this offer from eHarmony, take note of what he -assuming he's a guy and not a gal- had to say, so you can make the most at of this opportunity. The anonymous person seems to be a paying member at eHarmony so he probably knows the site better than I do.

" It's four days, Marguerite -- 96 hours. If you check your email several times a day, I assure you you can go through the steps quickly. And IF you're running out of time, then ASK FOR HIS EMAIL ADDRESS or give yours ("I'm just here for the weekend, Marguerite at mail that is hot.") in one of the blanks there.

1. eHarmony cannot police or block the thousands of messages sent through the site.

2. Take note that paying members can be taking advantage of the promo, too. We finally hear from our non-responding matches. "

After reading that comment I went back to eHarmony and found that one of my matches had closed our communication, he didn't like the fact that I put him on hold for a while. The others still have not responded. Until I get a response from them, with their questions, I'm unable to slip my email address in the spaces reserved for custom answers... Too bad for me, I guess my matches are not that much interested in me after all.

Related Posts:
Free communication weekend at eHarmony
Meeting People the second time around
Not-so-free Communication weekend at eHarmony

Not-so-free Communication weekend at eHarmony

As expected it was too good to be true. During the free communication weekend at eHarmony, you are not allowed to use FastTrack communication for free. Of course not. Otherwise you and your matches would just exchange email addresses in order to be able to communicate for free even after the free weekend. But that's certainly not something eHarmony wants you to do. The only form of communication you are allowed to use for free is the one that requires you to go through four stages before being able to write messages. These stages consists of a set of questions and answers you and your match have to send each other.

The people at eHarmony are really clever. They want you to come to the site and reconsider communicating with your matches by pretending that it's free. They know that you are not likely to make it through the four stages in the weekend so eventually, by the time you find someone really interesting, the weekend will be over and you'll have no choice but to pay to continue communicating with that person. Let's see if I can get to open communication with someone by Sunday.


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Free communication weekend at eHarmony
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Free communication weekend at eHarmony

eHarmony sent me a message today saying that I can communicate for free, until Monday, with all my matches without even having to enter my credit card information. I know what you're thinking, it sounds too good to be true. I had to give it a try. Though I can barely remember anything about my matches I hope they are all still willing to communicate with me.


Related Post:
Meeting People the second time around

Spammers and Yahoo

I saw this message after login into Yahoo messenger a few days ago, it was an offline message.
[yhelper_affiliates: Hi, mjasmin_ht This is an automated message from Yahoo! We invite you to take a look at one of our new affiliate sites. http://www.super-shack.com]

When you type the url, it redirects you to this other address http://software.electricaudit.com/. The spammer pretends to be Yahoo and invites me to an affiliate site. Of course this makes no sense at all. The only time Yahoo had invited me to anything was while I was surfing their sites. They would never send me an anonymous instant message only to ask me to visit a website which is not even theirs -it's not a [sitename].yahoo.com website-. Besides, Yahoo knows my name and if they ever had to address me a message they would use it and not just my ID. The point I'm trying to make is this, examine messages when you receive them and you should be able to detect spammers easily. The sad part about this is that Yahoo doesn't seem to be doing anything to fight the amount of spam that the Yahoo messenger users have to deal with, even when the spammers use Yahoo's name.

I copied the urls for information purpose only, visit them at your own risk, don't say I didn't warn you. It's yet another chat-detectives web page , they are trying to sell you a bunch of "software". Don't buy anything from them, please.

Even though they claim to be affiliated with Yahoo in the instant message they have this notice at the end of their web page: " Yahoo! , the Yahoo! logo, MSN, the MSN logo, Windows and the Windows logo are registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc, MSN and Windows. These programs are in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Yahoo! Inc, MSN or Windows. " Don't tell me you still need proof that those people are dishonest.

Here are more messages I've received from their bots:
plz_visit_chatdetectives.com_153: Ever wonder who your significant other talks to on Yahoo while you aren't home? Are they trustworthy or secretly having some type of online affair? Want to make sure your kids are not talking to someone questionable on Yahoo? If so we have the software solution for you. www.chat-detectives.com
plz_visit_chatdetectives.com_153: Ever wonder who your significant other talks to on Yahoo while you aren't home? Are they trustworthy or secretly having some type of online affair? Want to make sure your kids are not talking to someone questionable on Yahoo? If so we have the software solution for you. www.chat-detectives.com

Related posts:
More Spam via Yahoo messenger
Chat detectives strike again
Remember your public profiles


Join here and Chat for FREE without spam or bots

Remember your public profiles

After receiving one too many offline spam messages to one of my IDs that I never used in chat rooms, I had an epiphany. I finally realized one of the reasons those people where finding me is because I had too much information on display in my public profile. I had way more information than I thought, my full name, email, occupation etc... I removed most of it but people can still send me IM. Do you know how much personal information you have on your numerous internet profiles?


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Facebook - First impression

Facebook, second impression

I've recieved a few Facebook invites from friends with whom I chat on msn. Facebook is the social networking site that everyone is talking about right now. You would think the process of joining the site would be easy. On contrary, they have not one but two captcha words that you have to try to read in spite of the heavy distortion - don't forget to wear your reading glasses -. It confuses the Education level field with the full name field. I type in my full name and complete the form but when I try to submit I'm told that I must enter my full name. I recheck and retype only to get the same message again only after the third attempt do I realize that it's not my full name I did not provide but rather my level of education. I select one and voila. Maybe someday I'll actually like Facebook but that day has not arrived yet.


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Meeting People Online part I

The geography of social networking sites

Each country or community has its preferred social networking web site. Knowing which site the people from a certain country prefer, you can be sure to have the best odds of meeting a person from that country or community, at that particular web site.
A preferred social networking site is not only the networking site where people from a specific country are the most numerous, it's also the site where they are the most active. Below is the list of social networking web sites I've come up, with after a few years of being a member of most of them.

• Friendster for Filipinos/Asians
  
The first person who invited me to join Friendster was a Filipina. Though Friendster may be more popular in the Philippines than it is in other Asian countries, most Asians I've met online have a Friendster profile.

• Myspace for Americans
Myspace is extremely popular in the United States but its success doesn't seem to have spread too much worldwide.

• Hi5 for Haitians
  
I've said it before, Hi5 is the social networking site to find Haitian people.

• Orkut for Indians and Brazilians
I've received spam in Portuguese from Brazilian spammers who found my email through Orkut. I have three Gmail accounts, and the only one on which I receive those "Brazilian" spam messages is the one I use to connect to Orkut. Though I don't have any Brazilian contacts on Orkut, many of the Indian friends I've met online are there with their family, friends and coworkers.

• Perfspot for Turks
I've notice a high number of Turkish people on Perfspot, I'm guessing the founders must be Turkish or of Turkish origins.

I personally prefer Friendster for the look and easiness of use, Hi5 for the community, and Orkut for flexibility and control over your information. I'm not a Myspace member and I've only started using Perfspot this year, unless the later go through a major update and aggressive marketing campaign it will die soon enough. I guess it's hard to have all your social networking needs met by only one web site.

How about you? What's your favorite Social Networking Site? Please tell me by living a comment to this post and also remember to specify your country.


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Perfspot - Yet Another Social Networking Site

Perfspot is a social networking site that I've recently discovered. I consider it to be the turkish-beta-version of Friendster.

As in Friendster, there's the fake "hotel manager" from Canada who wants you to come and work at her hotel (omni hotels). I have no idea why it always has be Canada I guess it's because it's the same person. Read this forum thread about this fraudster (or someone like him/her).

[Here's the message she sent to me:
Good day, I am Rose from Canada, the manager of Omni canadian hotel, pls i want to inform you about the vacancies in our hotel, The management needs men and women, married and not married, who will work and live in canada .The hotel will pay for his flight ticket and assist him to process his visa in his country, if you are interested contact us via E-mail : omnihotels_international@yahoo.ca And the Hotel informations will be sent to you immediately. Thanks. From the Hotel manager. E-MAIL : omnihotels_international@yahoo.ca ]

The worst part is that this person is using someone's pictures on his profile. My guess, this person is not a woman but a man and probably located in an African country not Canada.

I wrote to one of the site's officials and told him about it. The spammer's profile is no longer on the site.

Guess what? I've had two Haitians wanting to add me as their friend on Perfspot, one of them even wrote me a message... It's usually a good sign when you find Haitians on a web site. Why is that? Because there aren't too many of us online, so if a web site has succeeded in having active Haitian members it means that the site has a hole lot of people from other countries and is (potentially) a popular success.

Meet another chatteress

No, I'm not introducing you to a new co-author of this blog. The other chatteress is actually a lady whose profile I encountered while searching for "chatteress" on Google. Can you believe that not one of my blogs comes as the first result. Among the results I found this lady's profile, she also calls herself "chatteress". She's a member of Christian Dating for free dot com, a free christian dating site(!). In case you were wondering, I'm not a member of that site myself.

Meeting People the second time around

If you intend to meet people online by joining specialized web sites or social networks you should take some time to fill out your profile correctly. Besides the basic information, the most important parts of your profile are those where you describe yourself in your own words and the ones where you describe the person you would like to meet.

I have profiles on so many websites that I've not only lost count of them but also have no idea what it is I had written there. But every once in a while I receive a message from one of those web sites I had completely forgotten about.

Last week-end for example has been quite an interesting one for me. I've been away from the internet since Saturday evening. And this morning as I came online to check my emails, blog statistics, comments and so on, I found a whole lot of emails waiting for me. Many are from various subscriptions but others were from "meeting-people" websites.

I had people sending me email, virtual flowers on both Friendfinder and Connecting Singles. Then I had about half a dozen matches from eHarmony.

I created my first Friendfinder profile about three years ago but no one ever expressed interest in me back then, and I eventually deleted it. It's also the second time I've joined eHarmony, the first time they never found a match for me, now suddenly I have half a dozen of them, maybe it's because I put fewer geographical restrictions. As for connecting singles, at some point I had completely forgotten about it. But when I was sent a first message a few weeks ago, I came back and realized that the text in my profile was so good that I might as well copy and paste it on any other site I want to join -and that's exactly what I did from that day on-.

A very short post

Msn smileys suck, big time. Yahoo smileys rock, woo hoo!



Join and Chat for FREE

I have seen 123 out of 239 films

I've taken this from Nick's blog. He's seen so many more films than I have.

"Supposedly, if you have seen more than 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you’ve seen. There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own blog, paste this as a note. Then, put x’s next to the films you’ve seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun."

( ) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
( ) Boondock Saints
( ) Fight Club
(x) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story
( ) Blazing Saddles
( ) Airplane

Total: 5

( ) The Princess Bride
( ) Anchor Man
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
( ) Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates
(x) The Princess Diaries
(x) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement

Total so far: 8

(x) Scream
( ) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
(x) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
(x) American Pie
(x) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp

Total so far: 12

(x) Harry Potter 1
(x) Harry Potter 2
(x) Harry Potter 3
(x) Harry Potter 4
(x) Resident Evil 1
(x) Resident Evil 2
( ) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
( ) Lilo & Stitch

Total so far: 18

(x) Finding Nemo
( ) Finding Neverland
(x) Signs
(x) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
(x) White Chicks
(x) Butterfly Effect
(x) 13 Going on 30
(x) I, Robot
(x) Robots

Total so far: 26

(x) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
(x) Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
(x) Deep Impact
( ) KingPin
(x) Never Been Kissed
(x) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
(x) Joe Dirt
(x) KING KONG

Total so far: 34

(x) A Cinderella Story
( ) The Terminal
(x) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
(x) Final Destination
(x) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
(x) Halloween
(x) The Ring
(x) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving -MAS
(x) Flubber

Total so far: 43

( ) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
( ) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
(x) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
(x) I Am Sam
(x) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards

Total so far: 46

(x) The Day After Tomorrow
(x) Child’s Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
(x) Bride of Chucky
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
(x) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
(x) Remember the Titans
(x) Coach Carter
(x) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
(x) The Mask
(x) Son Of The Mask

Total so far: 56

(x) Bad Boys
(x) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Sleven
(x) Ocean’s Eleven
(x) Ocean’s Twelve
(x) Bourne Identity
(x) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
(x) Bedazzled
(x) Predator I
(x) Predator II
( ) The Fog
( ) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George

Total so far: 65

(x) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(x) ET
(x) Children of the Corn
( ) My Bosses Daughter
(x) Maid in Manhattan
(x) War of the Worlds
(x) Rush Hour
(x) Rush Hour 2

Total so far: 72

( ) Best Bet
(x) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
(x) She’s All That
( ) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
(x) Mars Attacks
(x) Event Horizon
(x) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
( ) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
(x) The Terminator 3

Total so far: 82

(x) x-Men
(x) x-2
(x) x-3
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
(x) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
( ) Freaky Friday
(x) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2

Total so far: 93

( ) Swimfan
( ) Miracle on 34th street
( ) Old School
(x) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf’s Tribe
(x) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old Virgin

Total so far: 96

(x) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
(x) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
(x) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(x) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Total so far: 102

( ) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
( ) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
( ) Elf
(x) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
( ) American History X
( ) Three

Total so Far: 103

( ) The Jacket
(x) Kung Fu Hustle
(x) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
( ) Monsters Inc.
(x) Titanic
( ) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
( ) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard

Total so far: 106

( ) High Tension
( ) Club Dread
(x) Hulk
( ) Dawn Of the Dead
(x) Hook
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
(x) Waterworld

Total so far: 110

(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
(x) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
( ) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) the Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
( ) Army of Darkness

Total so far: 113

(x) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(x) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor

Total so far: 119

(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
( ) Team America: World Police
( ) Red Dragon
(x) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal

Total so far: 123

Now Add them up and…

Put “I’ve seen x out of 239 films” in the subject line and repost


free chat rooms

Seekrit Yahoo Chat Rooms

One day I went into Yahoo Chat and saw three strangely named rooms in the list of chat rooms. They were called Seekrit Room, Seekrit Room2 and Seekrit Room3. I tried to join them unsuccessfully until this day I don't know what they were all about, maybe yahoo chat was hacked or maybe it was an experiment by Yahoo who knows?

If you happen to know what those rooms were all about please let me know.

Join and chat for Free

The year 2006

I was going through the many text files on my computer and found this bit I wrote about the year 2006. For some reason I never had a chance to post it.

• The year 2006 will be remembered [by me] as the year when many of my chat friends got married and subsequently stopped coming online except maybe for the two times when I had the opportunity to inquire about their new family.

• The year when I wrote all the bad I think of Msn messenger.

• The year of many phone conversations with a few of my chat friends, one in particular.

• The year I met quite a few Haitians (Haitian-Americans to be precise).

• The year I watched, with horror, Yahoo messenger evolving to become more like Msn messenger until they finally came to a point where their users could communicate with each other.

• The year of the worm takeover of many of my friends' messengers.

What are you searching for ?

I thought I'd share with you a few queries people used to come to my blog.

• yahlite (read this and this)

• how to remove thecoolpics.com (read this and use an updated antivirus.)

• my egyptian boyfriend wants me to meet his parents (if you two are planning to get married soon I think it's natural for him to want you to meet his parents don't you? unless you suspect something else is going on like he might want to move back to his home country....)

• yahoo profiles of pakistani members with telephone numbers (now why would they put their phone numbers on their yahoo profile? they must be really brave. )

• dont know what people mean while chatting (me neither, sometimes)

• chat detectives (all you need to know about them is that they are spammers not the kind of people you want to buy anything from - also read this and this)

• dozy hair delhi blogspot (no comment)

• chat with people online (yes you can if you join right here)

Connecting Singles

Connecting Singles is a web site where you can meet people for free. I usually find the free web sites irresistible. Connecting Singles looked decent enough and I did decide to give it a try. Here's a list of quick facts about the site:

1. targeted population : It's an international website, people from around the world are welcomed to join.
2. amount of members : They have a reasonable number of members.
3. people in my area (Haiti) : Yes they do have a few Haitians, I was contacted by two of them!
4. quality of service : Good quality for a free website. It's basic but efficient.
5. number of features : A fair amount of features, flower sending and forums are very much used by the members.
6. finding people (search) : You can search for people based on all the elements possible on a profile.
   
7. contacting : Contacting people is very simple. You have the option of sending a flower with a quick note or a classic email.
   
8. spamming : I have received no spam in over a year of membership.
9. the community : I've seen many active discussions in the forums. The community seems to be very much alive and diversified also.
10. have I met anyone interesting : I've made a few contacts (about a dozen) two of them seem to be very interesting.
    
11. anything else : Yes. Even though I said in my profile that I'm not searching for a date I still get contacted by guys are interested and want to "see my picture or start a "meaningful" long-term relationship with me", or feel this "indescribable" and irresistible attraction to me (based solely on what I wrote in my profile). I don't even have a picture on that profile and still I get contacted by men from many different countries who are interested in me. Yes I told you my profile is that good! Unfortunately, not a single girl has contacted me. It's a shame but I'm sure it's due to the fact that the site is called Connecting "Singles" and therefore it's mostly viewed as a dating site and not a site where you can just make friends.
    

Related Posts:
Friendster, Hi5 and Orkut
Crisscross Network
Meet me at Hot or Not
Perfspot - Yet Another Social Networking Site
Meeting People the second time around

Meet me at Hot or Not

Do you Know "Meet Me"? How about "Hot or Not"? Hot or Not is a website where you post a picture and get points based on other users' ratings. Meet Me is a part of the site where you also post your picture but don't necessarily want people to rate it. Meet Me used to be like most online meeting websites, everybody could join for free but only paid members could initiate contact, not anymore. In may, Jim and James, the founders of Hot or Not decided to make the service completely free...

If you want to use Hot or Not's Meet Me, I'll give you one piece of advice, don't agree to meet -by "meet" I mean contact online not actually face to face meeting... - anyone who does not have a clear picture of him/herself or worse, someone with an evidently fake picture. Free services attract many people. Even when the service was not completely free I did meet quite a few people who had a paid membership. Though I must say that the initial contact didn't evolve into a very strong relationship but I still have some of them on my yahoo messenger contact list. I don't know about the girls but most of the guys' profiles I've come across are not fake. So you can add Hot or Not (Meet Me) on your list of websites where you can meet people online.

Why wouldn't you want to use Hot or Not to meet people online? The only reason would be if you are uncomfortable with putting your picture online since the service is based on photos you can't be a member without having your photo. The other reason why you might not enjoy the service is if you're not in the US, thought they do have people in many locations but most of the members are in the United States of America.

Indian content inside

I may not be Indian but I do write indian content. This blog appears in Guruji's search results for friendster .

In case you've never heard of Guruji.com, it's an Indian search engine, in the words of Anurag Dod, the company's CEO " [Guruji's] complex computing system crawls the web to identify Indian content, indexes the data and provides a simple keyword-based interface to access the information instantly..." (source: Tech2.com India).

The Indians I meet on the internet are not the only ones who think I'm Indian, search engines seems to think the same thing too.

Tagged by Nick

I was tagged by Nick. He started a meme:
10 Items or Less, If you could only keep 10 things in the entire world what would you keep?

So there it is, 10 things or less I would keep.

1) the clothes I'm wearing minus the shoes
2) a bible
3) my thumb drive
4) my bookmarks
5) my chat archives

I can't think of anything else I really need right now in order to survive. Oh no! I've written a list of items I need to survive on the internet!

Phone Calls and SMS

I've had the opportunities to enchant a few of my online friends with my voice on the phone. Eftha, Dozy, Ahmed from Pakistan, Ahmed from Nigeria, Iftekar, and most recently Mahmoud and Mike and of course all those that I met offline - as I think of it there's one person I might be calling soon -

The phone impression is actually closer to the real life impression than the chat impression. Oh wait let me rephrase that. You have a better idea of how you'll feel towards a person by talking to him on the phone than you do by simply text chatting with him. You might have a really great time chatting with someone and then be annoyed or totally uncomfortable talking to him on the phone, chances are you'll feel the same way when you'll meet face to face. There's at least one person I've decided not to meet offline after I've talked to him on the phone.

I've sent SMS to only 2 people, Mahmoud (again) and Ali. Both of them were very happy to received them and they thanked me afterwards. I forgot to add my name at the end of the message but still they both knew it was from me!

SMS is good for people you can't meet online anymore but still want to stay in touch with each other. The only problem is that some people are charged for each sms they receive so you might want to talk about it with your friend before you bombard him with 50 sms a day. It's the same for phone calls, some people are charged for calls received on their cell phones.


Need to call your friends abroad? ComFi.com is Your international pre-paid phone cards provider.

Contat Me

Please use the form below to contact me.

Name:


Email:


Message:

They are preying on your kids

Remember I wrote about "Dateline" catching online predators. Even though I seemed to mostly criticize the show I did not intend to say that there weren't predators out there. On the contrary. I provided you a link to Amy's story and today I read about a 42-year-old predator who was arrested after assaulting a 15-year-old girl. He drove and flew to meet her, and it didn't happen once but several times. As it is said in the article, the parents really need to do all that's possible to keep their children safe when their are online.


Technorati tags: online predators

FoundYouOnline

Note:This is a sponsored post

I was asked to review FYO1 (FoundYouOnline.com). It's the opportunity for me to discover yet another web site I can use to meet people online.

The first thought when you reach the web site is "Oh no how can it be so ugly". It's just blue, blue everywhere. The links are in a sort of green but underlined in yes you've guessed it blue! Ok... So if you can get pass the excess of ...blue, you are [I am] immediately attracted by the huge "FREE" at the upper right of the screen. Did they say free I just have to see that? And off I go to the registration page.

First disappointment, it's a US only website. It's probably easier for them to match people by location with their zip codes. And still I can't help but notice; this page is less blue but still quite ugly. I'm thinking, it might be Firefox. Yes, so many websites are optimized for Internet Explorer and this is one of them. Indeed, it looks better on Internet Explorer which is good, but knowing that an increasing number of people are using other browsers and by other browsers I don't mean only Firefox - I've recently had an increasing number of visitors using Opera - web masters should make an effort in making their websites look decent enough in more than one browser.

Now for a profile. Yes, it's pretty straightforward you are only asked for basic information. Though they do ask you for your address, it's unfortunate I don't like giving my address on the internet unless I'm making a purchase that has to be delivered... Why does a dating site need my address for anyway? Then I go to my profile and still I can't get over the look of the website, I might as well run away from it after all. No, I found the strength to go on and see, who knows, they might have a really interesting pool of members, and besides the service is FREE, remember.

Then it looks so complicated, all this text I have to go through, I decide to postpone my profile update until I'm sure this website is right for me.

Finally, the one thing that I've been wanting to do ever since I discovered this website, search for people... and here I go.

There are three search options:

• Single

• Classmates

• Military

I choose "singles" and I'm very disappointed. They only have a basic search feature by sex, zip code and also you can choose to view only profiles with photos. They have very few members and as oddly as it may seem they have more women than men. I've been on many such sites and they never, ever have more women than men. A total of 6 single men searching for women compared to 47 single women searching for men. Nothing to get excited about really.... There’s only one word that comes to my mind as I browse through the result pages seeing all those single women on the website: "fake". I just don't believe they are all real profiles. I may be wrong but ... I doubt it.

What more can I say. How can the site be improved. Because, yes indeed it can be. They desperately need more members. There are many ways to attract people -a negative review is not one of them-. The fact that the service is free is attractive but you get more service with a free account on a paid site. Let me try to make a list of what I think could help this website succeed.

1. Find more people. The site's owners should run an aggressive advertising campaign aimed at recruiting new members. because it's seriously lacking members. They should also in the campaign let people know that it's a service aimed at US residents only and not an international web site.
2. State the service clearly. The site's owners should clearly let people know what exactly is particular about their website. Why would someone join foundyouonline.com instead of any other free dating, military, and classmate or friendship site? Or whatever it is that this site is supposed to offer.
3. Improve the look. They can keep the blue if they want but make it easier for people to do basic task and find their way around. If it looked more attractive people might just want to spend more time on it.
4. Once they've improved it ask me to review it again though if it's well done they probably won’t need that....

Meeting People Offline - part III

I've mot most of my online friends through Yahoo! Chat, especially the very first ones. But of all those Ive had the opportunity to meet face to face only a single one was through Yahoo [members directory]. I want to tell you about this one person I've met through Friendster.

I first came to Friendster after accidentally being invited by a person who didn't know me [a long story]. After getting there I put my picture and thought I might as well stay there and see what happens. After a while, I was contacted by a couple of people. One of the good things about websites such as Friendster is the possibility to send messages to other members for free. Of all the people who contacted me one was a Sri Lankan who was staying in Haiti for a few months. We wrote each other emails, sent each other pictures and talked on the phone. The phone conversations were a great idea for I felt very comfortable talking to him, even when I pressed him with all sorts of queries he would answer me satisfactorily. Then it finally came, the time when we would meet face to face. It was a long anticipated meeting and we did not expect to be able to do it again before he went back to his country. We spent over an hour together, we talked, took pictures, watched a video on Sri Lanka, exchanged gifts and then the time came for us to part.

It was the least awkward offline meeting I've had, I was very relaxed and not worried a bit maybe it's because I was in a ratter 'safe' environment.

We met again the day he was going back to Sri Lanka so we said good bye. Now that he's back to his country we still email each other to keep in touch.

Wasn't that a nice story, unfortunately offline meetings can turn out to be nightmares so always play it safe, for practical advice read from the web sites below:

Online Dating Personals: Safety Tips
Meeting People Online : Is it Safe
About : Teen Advice - Meeting People Online
Amy's Story

Meeting People Online II - To Catch a Predator

I've wanted to write about the american television show Dateline: To Catch a Predator since the first time I watched it. Frankly my thoughts never seemed to come in order as I think of this show. It has existed for some time now but I've only been aware of it in the past months.

The premise of the show is as follows. The people of Dateline team up with a group called 'Perverted-Justice'. They have volunteers from Perverted Justice posing as a 12,13, or 16 year old [age varies] and meeting adult men [as in 18 and up]. The volunteers pose as either boys or girls. They enter chat rooms typically and eventually meet with older men who are very interested in them. The chatting soon becomes very sexually explicit. If you're a woman and have ever met people in chat rooms you know how things can get and what type of conversations most of those people lead. If you're a man you're either one of those people or have no idea what I'm talking about...

After chatting for a while and sometimes even exchanging pictures, the fake kid and the potential predator arrange a meeting a the kid's house. The fake kid tells the potential predator that he/she'll be home alone, so it's a golden opportunity for them to meet. Then they would chat about what he'll do when he gets there. - It does not always go on like this but I just wanted you to have an idea, to know what they chat about visit Dateline's web site.-

Those men are so clueless. But the unreal part of all this is the "child. Never any disgust nor anger no matter what the guy throws at her. That "child" is so willing and going along with absolutely all the men are saying, and telling them that she's home alone is just unreal. A child who does such a thing needs serious help. I really have a hard time imagining any teen ager doing such a thing unless he/she has major issues or really huge problems at home. I've met quite a few young chatters online and they don't disclose their personal information to the new comers just like that. When you think of it, it's really twisted. You can see some videos and transcripts of the show their website.
I couldn't help but feel uneasy watching the show, it was worse after I visited their website. At least one person has died because of that show, a person who committed suicide while police came to arrest him after a series of those chat sessions.

What problem do I have with this show?
You see, I've met so many people online I wont say I've seen it all, hopefully I've not but I have seen a lot and I know what some people are capable of throwing at you. But I've also seen something that those people at Perverted-Justice will probably never see. I've seen men going from the lowest low of online sexual solicitation to actually asking me to forgive them. There is a least one person who became my friend after such an episode but it only happen for two reasons:
1) I never responded positively to any of his solicitations
2) I got seriously mad at him

I actively discouraged him in pursuing such a relationship with me and he knew he would be off my list if he continued.

I believe everyone has at least one low point in his life, hey I have quite a few myself but I also believe that you should help people rise but not fall.

I also believe that many people lead a fantasy life when they are online, it's the virtual world and anything is possible but it stays in the virtual world and they know it's not possible in the real world until someone comes along and tell them that it is and that's exactly what the Perverted-Justice people teamed up with Dateline are telling those men, "No, it doesn't have to stay in the virtual world anymore, now you have a chance to live this fantasy for real."

Even though it's all filmed in the US, I've seen many foreigners show up to meet the home-alone kid they met online, some were asian. When I watched them and listened to what they had to say, they reminded me of some of the people I've met online myself, I couldn't help but think that this was the kind of thing that could happen to them and I couldn't help but feel sorry for those men -not for all of them though-.

Moreover, I've not seen Dateline or Perverted-Justice address the matter of how to protect the children from predators. I'm not denying that there are predators on the internet preying over children but if a child could have the exact same behavior as the Perverted Justice volunteer in chat rooms I believe those children need help and they need it urgently because they will certainly be victims of predators. I don't know if they had done this in previous episodes but I didn't see them say "parents this is how you can protect your children from online predators now that you know that they do exist and that you've seen some of their faces".

Finally, how about the "predators" themselves. Is anything being done to help them, surely they do need help because they will find themselves on the internet again and potentially will meet other children online, what is done to take the predator out of those men? Does Dateline even believe that is necessary?

What is Dateline trying to achieve with "To Catch a Predator"?
Are they trying to warn parents? Warn children? Scare predators? Humiliate a group of men on television ? Or just make more money? Are they helping the community or are they just helping themselves?

One thing is for sure, the show was a success with the audience, so much that it has been copied. America's Most Wanted has teamed up with Miss America herself to make a show that's similar to Dateline's "To Catch a Predator". I've not watched it, therefore I can't say in which way the two shows differ but from what I've seen in the previews and commentaries from the people behind it, I'm not expecting any better.

For parents reading this, do monitor your children's online activities, protect them and help them protect themselves.


Notes: I've gone through Dateline's website again and they do have links for parents and children and for potential predators.


A few links :
Blogcritics Magazine - Thoughts on Dateline's "To Catch a Predator"
The New Republic - Behind "Dateline"'s icky hidden camera series
Internet Safety News - Amy's Story

Related Posts:
Meeting People Online - Part I
Meeting people Offline - part I
Meeting people Offline - part II
Meeting People Offline - part III

Mike

Mike is actually the only person I know with whom I share my birth date. I met Mike in a Yahoo Chat room -sorry but I can't tell you which one-. Our conversations started a bit oddly. It was apparent from the first day that littleio11 was not telling all the truth about himself but there was something in the way he talked and in the things he was saying that not only caught my attention but had me wanting to know him better. It's not easy to explain but sometimes you just feel this instant attraction to a person you're chatting with, I felt that for littleio. At first we were practically wresting each other. He wanted me to tell him more about myself, I was being secretive while pressing him for more openness -yes that's me alright-. I eventually had it my way, maybe he suddenly felt comfortable with me, nevertheless he told me about his life and it seemed to make perfect sense.

We were born on the exact same day, can you believe it? What are the chances of such a thing happening? Mike is from Lebanon, so he also speaks French, did I hear someone say wow! We work in the same field. We really have many things in common.

Chatting with Mike was good enough as long as he was still in Lebanon but now that he's spending some time in the US I finally had the opportunity to talk to him on the phone! Oh wow! Now his accent when he speaks English is not exactly as I imagined it but once I had heard it I could tell how he would sound in French! The conversation was fun and pleasant. Now that we've talked on the phone there's only one thing left for us to do! but unfortunately that's not yet possible.

Wedding Bells

After a year ore more of absence a friend comes back to announce me a great news and I realize I had forgotten his name... Since I was not using my usual computer I did not have the message archive to refresh my memory. Even though I don't think he ever knew my name it still bothered me that I could not recall his.

I always remembered his name in the past, I could remember writing it and pronouncing it but it just would not come back to my memory. My friend who's name is Antonio (as my Archive told me a few days later) is Peruvian. He was really happy to chat with me after over a year. He was even more happy to tell me that he would be getting married by the end of this year. I'm really happy for him. Antonio is just one more person on my ever growing list of people I met online who were single then but have gotten married since or will do so by the end of the year.

Now remember this blog is two years old and I've been meeting people online since 2003. A vast majority of the people I've met so far are males in their twenties, probably most of them will eventually get married before they reach 30. For those who've done it already it always means that they'll have less time to come online and the possibility that the new wife might be upset that her husband is maintaining an online relationship with a woman they don't even know. In the end, a marriage almost always means the end of the online friendship no matter how long it had lasted and even if it doesn't end it changes for ever.

Coming Up

Recently, I've found myself doing something I had not done in a while, I was "bothering" people around me, friends and family, with stories of the people I met online.

Not only do they have no idea who those people are but they don't even care actually. Knowing that one of the reasons why I started this blog in the first place was to stop annoying people around me with those stories that I love telling so much. It was clear that I had not been blogging enough and that there were many things to be said, updates on past friends and introductions to new ones.

The meeting people online series will be back so will the meeting people offline series and in between I'll give my opinion on a couple of American television shows related to the subject.

Chat Detectives Strike Again

My stats tell me that many more Yahoo messenger users are getting spam message from the chat detectives people. As I said before, do not buy anything from them! Don't say I did not warn you. One more thing you should do is report them to Yahoo. I've received no more than two offline messages from them in the past months.


Technorati tags:chat detectives, darksoulmedia

Me and the Girls... and ICQ

I have only 4 females on a total of about 120 contacts on my list including single people with multiple IDs. On ICQ I have only 3 people one male and two females. On MSN I have about a dozen contacts, most of them university friends with a few people I met on Yahoo! with a total of four females only.

The ICQ lite I use is too invading, it's everything but discreet and it's not very convenient to use and it looks ugly,it's overloaded with commercials a little like MSN and it's not easy to hide and I have yet to find the time to customize the settings in the way I would want. But I chat once in a while with the first two young ladies I met on ICQ. I can't say the same about the first girls I met on Yahoo Chat, the only reason why I still remember their names is because they are girls.

It seems people are more likely to fill out their personal information on ICQ or maybe it's just that their search feature works quite well, you can search people by interest, location, etc...

January 20th, 2007

It's been 2 years since I've started this blog. Can you believe it? A few hundred contacts later all I can say is that there are still many people out there for me to meet and get to know.

When I look back at what I wrote last January I'm very glad to say that I still keep in touch with Greeny whose blog I still read and I'm still inspired by Nick every now and then when I stop by at his blog.

Unfortunately I've not heard or read anything from Apostle John in a while, it's unfortunate since I don't have his contact information. He stopped blogging without saying anything I want to believe that he pulled the plug suddenly for some reason like many bloggers end up doing but that his family and him are Ok. Meq is also someone who seemed to have pulled the plug long before Apostle John did I could not find a person on her blogroll who could give me any news from her they didn't know her outside of the web. Sudhu still blogs (not very often) and I do pay him a visit once in a while.

This year also saw a drastic reduction of my chatting hours for better -my hands enjoyed the rest- and worse -I'm a hard time keeping in touch...-.

Seeing how this year started out for me it seems 2007 will be a year of consolidation. I might not meet many new people but I'll do my best to maintain the already existing "relationships" I have.

I feel flattered by my 21 feed subscribers, in fact it intimidates me a bit since I have not idea who 98% of you are. That second year sure went by quickly...

To end this post I want to thank all my chat friends without whom this blog would have never existed, my blogger friend from whom I've learned a lot, my feed subscribers their increasing number encourages me and all my visitors particularly those with whom I've chatted and who took the time to tell me what they liked or disliked about my blog. Thank you to all of you!

Tags: Two Years, Blog Anniversary

On Saddam's execution

Riad asked for my opinion on Saddam Hussein's execution. I told him what I thought about it in brief and then he told me that Saddam was a good man (by the way how many world leaders are known by their first name?).

So I went on to ask him about the was with Iran, the invasion of Kuwait and the Kurds.

He said nothing about the war with Iran but he did say that the Kurds deserved whatever Saddam did to them because they supported Iran during the Iran/Iraq war and as for Kuwait, he said that they deserved it too because the made the Oil price go down.

I have to admit I was perplexed.

I tend to avoid political chat because I don't remember a single one I had that ended well.


Technorati Tags: Chat, Saddam, Execution

Who are you?

I've written about it before in the past, but it's happened to me again.
Riad, a Jordanian man in his 40s (or 50s?), married with children, starts talking "nonsense" to me. The sort of nonsense some married men like to chat about when their wife is away...[I can't be more explicit than that because there are kids reading this]

Then it occurred to me that maybe someone else was using his computer and posing as him so I decided to test that person by referring to personal information I knew about him, he seemed to have passed that test but a person who knew him well enough would have passed it; so even now I'm having doubts. The fact is, unless the person you're chatting with is using a web cam you cannot be sure he is who he claims to be.

Countless time I would be mad at someone because of things he had said in a previous conversation only to have him ask me to forgive him because someone else was using his ID and that he was really sorry and that this someone else also did the same thing to his other friends etc... I'm hoping the same thing happened with Riad, it wasn't him, it could not have been him...


Technorati Tags: Chat, Impersonators

Happy New Year!!!

2007 is a brand new year, you can almost smell the freshness in the air! Well, even if you can't, I want to wish all of you a happy new year! May this year be a good one for all of you my friends and readers.