| B.C. Mountie who had sex on the job ordered to resign
A British Columbia Mountie who had sex on the job and used his uniform to draw dates will have to resign, an RCMP adjudication board decided Wednesday. RCMP Const. Trent Richards admitted to having sex with women on at least 15 occasions while on duty at the rural detachment in Shawnigan Lake, B.C., on Vancouver Island. Richards, 34, posted his profile on internet dating sites offering "sex with a hot cop" and posted a photo of himself in his red serge dress uniform on one site. RCMP accused Richards of using force computers to pursue his extra-curricular activities. Richards has been suspended with pay since January 2007. The adjudication board decided Richards must resign within two weeks or be dismissed for "repeated on-duty sexual activity, as well as repeated misuse of RCMP information technology." He has 14 days to appeal the decision to the RCMP commissioner.
SayHeyHey: Online dating gets video site
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Many online dating sites seek to connect soul mates, to bring together those looking for eternal and everlasting love. The latest Internet dating site, recently launched in Palo Alto, is not one of them. "It's not about marriage," said Alex Gurevich, co-founder of SayHeyHey.com, the first free all-video online dating site. The new site eschews the typical format of online dating sites where users carefully word profiles and post photos "from 10 years and 20 pounds ago," Gurevich said. Instead, users of SayHeyHey post videos of themselves talking, wakeboarding or — in co-founder Soudy Khan's case — utilizing a beer bong. If a visitor is interested in someone else's clip, he or she can send a video introduction.
Cyber love lost in Russian bride scam
An online Russian dating scam that Canadian police say has organized crime roots has bilked men of thousands of dollars. Several men report being duped into sending romantic gifts and money to men posing as Russian brides on internet dating sites. According to an investigation by Radio-Canada's La Facture program, the number of incidents involving Canadian men is on the rise. Francis, 29, is a Quebecer who said he was scammed after falling in love with a blond Russian named Irina Gorachkina, whom he found on a dating website. He said they started out exchanging neutral, friendly e-mails. "At first we talked about what we were like," he told Radio-Canada. "I told her I liked the outdoors, walking in the woods." Francis's e-mail correspondence with Irina grew intimate and after weeks passed was filled with declarations of love such as, "I need you like a fish needs water, like a bird needs wings.
Emory’s Burn Book, Online
It's Craiglist on crack, Facebook gone wild.
It features headlines that read “ATO = Gay?", “Dating an Emory Girl VS. Sticking Your Head in a Toilet" and even “The Jews Ruin This School."
Its supporters call it harmless. Its detractors, many of whom have been the subject of defamatory posts, call it slanderous.
It's JuicyCampus.com, and it's the latest — and most controversial — online craze to hit campuses, including Emory's.
The site's premise is simple: Bring middle school-level gossip to the Internet. Juicy Campus is unregulated and anonymous. The site, created by Duke alum Matt Ivester, includes a disclaimer that serves as its guiding principle: “Facts can be untrue. Opinions can be stupid, or ignorant, or mean-spirited, but they can't be untrue.
Whither Shakespeare? He's backeth, baby!
Lots of famous people are on MySpace. But a good number of them are long dead. Every dead poet, philosopher, artist and past president you can think of has a MySpace page -- and many are presented in the first person, as if Thomas Edison and Joan of Arc are lounging at home in their pajamas, posting pictures and updating their blogs. Benjamin Franklin recommends that his visitors read a bio that's posted on the site. "Maybe," he writes, "it will help people realize that flying a freakin' kite wasn't my greatest accomplishment." Charles Darwin has gotten tired of people spamming his page. So he'll be approving comments before they're posted, thanks. And George Washington asks us: "Who rocked the revolution? ... That's right, I did." The Internet can bridge distances, bringing people together across continents.
Match.com Eyes Social Scenes at Facebook, MySpace
Online dating site Match.com has made its own resolution for 2008: to get out and meet more people, or in this case, potential subscribers. Match is in the midst of a foray into Internet social networks, testing an application for online hangout Facebook, and seeks growth in new vehicles for its subscription service, according to Chief Executive Thomas Enraght-Moony.
"We're extending Match to wherever people are," Moony told Reuters in an interview in New York on Monday. "MySpace has announced their platform initiative, we're exploring that. If they opened up the Nintendo Wii (video game console), I'd probably do that as well." After building sites for lonely hearts in 37 countries, Match posted slower global subscriber growth at the end of 2007 from a year ago as it fends off competition from rival services, as well as from social networks themselves.
Vumber Launches Virtual Phone Number Service on Paltalk.com
NEW YORK, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Vumber (www.vumber.com), the secure, two-way disposable calling service, today announced a new partnership with Paltalk (www.paltalk.com), the leading real-time, video-based community with over 4 million active members, to provide privacy-ensured virtual phone numbers to its user base. "Online dating and chat groups continue to be a fast growing trend, yet some participants are reluctant to share their personal phone numbers online," said Vumber Co-Founder Cliff Wener. "With Vumber, Paltalk members will have more privacy, control and freedom when providing phone numbers to one another." According to a study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 11% of all American Internet-using adults - about 16 million people - say they have gone to an online dating website or other site where they can meet people online.
NJ sex offenders banned from online socializing
The state Parole Board today banned the 4,400 registered sex offenders it supervises from using social networking Web sites, chat rooms and online dating services as a way to prevent them from possibly luring victims into real-world danger. The move comes after a state investigation into 268 New Jersey registered sex offenders found that using the site MySpace.com led to only two offenders being punished because existing state rules only banned those who used a computer to commit a sex crime from visiting such sites. "The protection of all of our citizens and particularly our young people makes the imposition of this new restriction critical," state Parole Board Chairman Peter Barnes said after the board unanimously approved the ban. Sex offenders will still be allowed to visit other Internet sites as well as use e-mail.
|
