Online dating: eHarmony vs. Match.com

Throughout the semester I have been experimenting with online dating websites. I will be discussing other's and my experiences with two popular dating sites and evaluating the value of such a tool as both a networking and dating tool. Both have differing negative and positive values, but can prove to have equally great outcomes. Although interesting tools for communication, the overall effectiveness of both may be doubtful due to the business aspects of each service. The social infomation processing theory and Social individualization/deindividuation theory may help prove why these sites are sometimes successful in creating dating relationships on and off-line. I hope you guys enjoy my presentation! See you in class!

Cody

Going Dutch: networking tools for sharing money

In college, we spend a lot of time short on funds and sharing our money and resources with friends and housemates. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of who paid for what in these situations, and it matters when you have little money!

Here's a new tool ("Buxfer") created by some Carnegie Mellon grad students to use social networking tools, the web, and mobile phones, to make this situation easer:

Fed up with haggling over shared debts, Carnegie Mellon University computer science graduate students Shashank Pandit, Amit Manjhi and Ashwin Bharambe three years ago created Buxfer, short for ''bucks transfer.'' The social-networking site with a personal-finance focus allows users to form groups of friends or housemates and track who owes what for utility bills, dinner tabs, day trips and other shared expenses.

You can find the tool this web site. Enjoy!