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Employees' Extramarital E-Mails Creep Out Entire Cornell Campus

Ithaca may be "Gorges," but an ugly e-mail blunder has recently rocked the New York college town, eliciting a region-wide cringe. A married consultant employed at Cornell University, known as John, recently sent a long series of salacious e-mails to his mistress, a Cornell Business School employee named Lisa (also married). And now the entire school knows about it.

See, in a recent email to his illicit lover, John accidentally CC'd the entire school, and now everyone with an Internet connection knows about the darkest, kinkiest corners of their affair. Guest of a Guest has posted the full e-mail exchange (not safe for work), along with the philanderers' photos, so go ahead and check it out if you want. Here's a (comparatively tame) sample from John: "I think about the time spent on your couch often, in that regard. Plus, I also recall looking deep into your eyes, touching your face, and kissing you SO DEEPLY."

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Cell Phones

Senior Citizen Sexting on the Rise

Troubling instances of teen sexting have been all over the news as of late, with randy kids and their sexy messages and photographs often leading to public derision, expulsion, and sometimes even arrest. Thankfully, the disturbing trend among the nation's youth seems to be nearing an end.

The primary reason? Because it looks like old people are getting into it. We know (gag), and we're sorry, but the American Association of Retired People (AARP) Web site recently posted a story that details the growing popularity of raunchy text exchanges among senior citizens. (Hopefully it's exaggerating.) One man named Roger (His last name was apparently withheld to prevent his grandchildren from jabbing pencils into their eyes and ears.) told the AARP, "I'll say, 'You have an amazing body. You have amazing breasts.' The next thing you know, you'll get a picture of a breast." Shudder.

So, the next time you see Grandma sheepishly grinning as she checks her cell, don't even try to wipe the memory of this indelible story from your brain. It will, unfortunately, be permanently seared into your subconscious. Again, our apologies. [From: AARP via Tech Radar and Gawker]

Web, Social Networking

Chinese Flock to Virtual Apartments for Dating

As any seasoned city-dweller knows, personal living space is valued at a premium. And as any warm-blooded human being knows, finding true love can present an even more harrowing task than locating a decent Manhattan sublet. Finding both? Crazy talk. The world's most populous country is no exception to this universal struggle. With over 1.3 billion people, China and its urban centers are becoming increasingly crowded, complicating the already thorny search for love and stability. A new site for young Chinese singles, though, purports to make the search for domestic bliss a bit easier.

iPartment, the latest teenage online craze in China, is a social networking, gaming, and online dating site where users create their own virtual apartment (with pets, gardens, and games) and then spend their time looking for someone else to share it with. The idea is pretty simple: use the appeal of online accessorizing and homemaking to attract a bunch of young, single girls to the site, convince the guys that if they want to have a chance with the ladies, they'd better join, too... and voilà.

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Web, Social Networking

Finding Love With Twitter and Netflix

Successfully navigating the seas of online dating can be a daunting and, some would argue, impossible feat. Sifting through profiles and trying to attach human qualities to otherwise cliched online personas is often arduous enough to deter even the most hardy romantics. A new approach to online matchmaking, featured at NYTimes.com, hopes to revolutionize the game.

Started by divorced entrepreneur Steve Odom, Gelato transforms the online dating convention of carefully manicured, pre-meditated personal profiles into more "real-time" displays that build personalities based on an individual's online activity (check out the "signing up" video after the break). Users create an initial profile by importing data from their Facebook or Twitter accounts. From there, they can then choose to "sync" their account to a variety of other sites, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, last.fm, or different social networking sites. The Gelato account will then track the user's activity on the selected Web sites, and make that information public. If you buy a book on Amazon, for example, or stream a certain TV show on Hulu, the activity will show up on your Gelato page, supplementing your basic information, and fleshing out otherwise static personal information. Gelato singles also have the option to search for potential partners based on shared interests or tastes.

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Web

Artist Illustrates Craigslist 'Missed Connections'

Part urban poetry, part pure comedy, there is something touching about Sophie Blackall's "Missed Connections NY" drawings. Like most of us urban dwellers, Sophie occasionally drops in on the Craigslist 'Missed Connections' section, which hopes that some lovelorn individual has a moment of reciprocation with a complete stranger. Sophie draws those moments, simply, in colored pencil, and describes the scenarios, which usually all start and end the same way: two people on the train, sharing a brief moment (maybe?), and neither getting up the nerve to say anything. Blackall's whimsical drawings capture both the romance and the awkwardness.

We all scroll through the M.C.s, from time to time, looking through our respective train routes, half-hoping to see a description of ourselves. Mostly, the posts are funny, like "Are you scared of birds or something? Well, whatever the case...it was cute," but some are outright charming, like "I bought you that milkshake...you just didn't realize it." If anyone sees a description like, "Lost-looking blogger-type covered in coffee stains, most likely late for work. Too involved in her DS to pay attention, but was alluring underneath the un-brushed hair," send us a tip. Could lead to something interesting. [From: Missed Connections via: Apartment Therapy]

Web

Two Kelly Hildebrandts Wed Thanks to Facebook


Sometimes, when it comes to whirlwind romances and soul mates, when you know, you just know. But every now and then, potential love needs some help, a type of sign, like, say, uniting a couple with the same name.

Everyone on Facebook has searched for themselves to see if they can find anyone else with the same name. But for the Kelly Hildebrandts, that search led to a love connection. A guy and gal, each named Kelly Hildebrandt, found each other over the social networking site, when female Kelly sent a message to a guy with the same name. According to NBC Miami, girl Kelly said, "I searched my own name and he's the only one who came up, and actually in the picture, he didn't have a shirt on, and I was like 'Oh, he's cute.'" Three weeks after the initial Facebook message, boy Kelly flew to Florida to see the woman that shares his name. The rest is history.

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Cell Phones, Computers

German Couples Prefer Internet, Cell Phones to Romance

German Couples Prefer Internet, Cell Phones to Romance

Remember when we indicated that half of women would rather spend time online than being intimate with their partners? Many of you reacted with disbelief and many of you agreed wholeheartedly. Regardless of your opinions on the subject, it seems that the sentiment is shared in Europe as well, with a survey of 20-something-year-old couples finding that 84-percent of them would rather break up with their current partner than break up with their Internet connection.

The study was conducted by a German Internet service provider named Bitkom, which found that survey respondents in the age bracket of 19 to 20 were far more enamored with their high-speed Internet connections than they were with their lovers. A whopping 97-percent of the 1,000 people polled said they'd prefer to keep their mobile phones than their partners, if given the chance.

That last statistic , we think, is a little bit sad, but given how attached we are to ours, it's not entirely surprising. [From: Reuters]

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Computers, Video Games

Man Who Proposed Via 'Bejeweled' Game Finally Weds Bride IRL



In the "oh no they didn't" category or geekdom, computer programmer Bernie Peng married his bride-to-be Tammy Li in New Jersey over the weekend. What made it so special? Peng popped the question to his girlfriend in arguably the nerdiest way possible: He spent a month reprogramming Li's Sfavorite game, 'Bejeweled,' so that when she reached a certain score a ring and a marriage proposal popped up.

Good news all around: When Li hit the score, she accepted the marriage proposal, and Peng posted the event on his blog. Over the next several months, he received thousands of hits on his blog and news of the cyber-courtship spread around the Web.

All of which was followed by a cool gesture (and ridiculously good marketing opportunity) by PopCap Games -- the creator of 'Bejeweled' -- which actually offered to help pay for the wedding. And it did, providing a cake in the shape of a videogame console, and giving away free copies of the game as wedding favors. [From: NJ.com]



Computers, Google

Google Employee Uses Street View for Marriage Proposal

Google Employee Exploits Google Street View for Proposal

We've seen some odd things from Google's Street View, which provides a 360-degree view of the highways and byways through many towns to help you find your way, but we haven't seen any geek marriage proposals yet. It took a Google employee, Michael Weiss-Malik, to pull that off. Weiss-Malik took advantage of a GoogleMobile drive-by to show his undying love for his fiancee, Leslie.

Yes, she was already his fiancee, having accepted an earlier (and far less geeky) proposal. For round two, though, Michael decided to go a little more high-tech, which you can see for yourself here. So, congrats on the engagement Michael -- and we hope Leslie doesn't ever find you doing something shadier via the service. [From: ValleyWag]

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