Archive for July, 2008
Databases
Posted by AI Dating | Filed under General, Web Development
Currently I am upgrading the database queries to use PEAR::MDB2 for there queries. This is both more future proof and it has possibilities to prevent from potential mysql injection attacks to harm the site.
Some facts about online dating
Posted by AI Dating | Filed under Literature, Social Psychology
The majority of online daters are in between 18 and 34 years old.
One in a hundred singles that had a partner once found it through online dating.
The reasons for singles to visit online dating sites are ‘curiousity’, ‘fun’, ‘to get to know someone’ and ‘boredom’.
A quart of the online daters that used online dating one or more times did register for a paid dating site at least once.
The majority of online daters describes their experience with online dating as ‘good nor bad’.
One third of the online daters managed to get at least one relationship through online dating.
Almost a quart of the registered online daters arrange a real life meeting after the first email contact.
According to four out of ten of the registered online daters that made a meeting in real life, the last meeting resulted in a one night stand or sexual relationship. In 7 percent this meeting resulted in a relationship.
Findings from: TNS Nipo, ´Online dating: aantrekkelijk of niet?’, ocktober 2004, for Parship.nl.
Ajax GUI
Posted by AI Dating | Filed under Developments, Web Development
Currently I am working on the AJAX GUI in which I use EXT JS. EXT JS is an AJAX framework like those of Google, Dojo, Mochikit, Spry. EXT is based on Yahoo’s YUI framework. The use of AJAX enables me to do asynchronous updates in the graphical user interface (like updating questions from the AI matching agent) and it makes it more easy to build rich user interfaces. On the other hand you have to make extensive use of Javascript, which is harder than conventional web development and it takes more effort to protect all possible asynchronous requests from unauthorised use.
Templating and friendly urls
Posted by AI Dating | Filed under Developments, Web Development
Today I installed the Smarty template engine in order to keep the programming logic and presentation logic seperate. I embedded smarty in a mechanism for url rewriting so the page requests are queried to the database and then processed by smarty so that every request can be shown in whichever template.
Security
Posted by AI Dating | Filed under Developments, Web Development
Since a dating site deals with extensive user data, security might be an issue. Although from the ethics perspective people will agree on the fact that the supplied information becomes property of the application and/or organizations around it. Just like on MySpace and other social profile equivalents. However the data gathered should also be stored in a secure way so that other users can’t access it when they don’t have permission to get it.
So I looked into authorisation systems. Some scripts are now secured using the apache authorisation module (.htpasswd). However for the user pages I needed an authorisation script that is secure and provides people with a login and sessions so they can stay logged in for some time. Many scripts were available but I decided to go with the Auth extension of Pear. For which an installation of Pear is also a prerequisite. So today I installed PEAR and I am experimenting with the offered authorisation options and how to implement those. Good authentication is a necessity especially since AJAX requests are quite vulnerable to misuse. Tomorrow I will look into how to store the user data. PEAR is also used for the database abstraction layer and might be used for other functionality that will be implemented.
Creating a secure PHP login script
Creating a secure PHP Login Script
Pear
Dating Shows and Online Dating Are Cashing In
Posted by AI Dating | Filed under Argos
I read the following on entrepreneur.com; so soon I will be rich?:
The business of finding that special someone has become ridiculously profitable for dating companies. And it doesn’t matter if you are a big fish or a one-man band.
Consider the proliferation of dating sites like PerfectMatch.com and MingleCity.com. TV commercials have been cropping up for Chemistry.com and, for a hot minute, I noticed that Dr. Phil had hung his shingle up at Match.com. Meanwhile, Marcus Frind, founder and CEO of Plentyoffish.com, has managed to take the free dating site he’s been running out of his apartment since 2003 to the top (Number one in Canada, number one in the UK and number three in the U.S.) using artificial intelligence. He probably figured, why buy the cow when you can develop an AI to run your site for pennies on the dollar? Frind, a 29-year-old computer programmer who appeared on The Today Show last summer, works a measly 10 hours a week and rakes in net profits of about $10 million a year. Clearly he’s struck a nerve worldwide. So, from what I can see, dating and the search for love represent a culture on the rise that doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. (read further)
Domain Hunting
Posted by AI Dating | Filed under Developments, Web Development
For the past months I have been thinking about how to represent a dating site. How should the user experience be. One part of it is the GUI and another aspect is the name. What is in a name? Well a lot I guess! Almost every name related to dating (including stupid names incorporating numbers, mistypings, etc) have been taken, either by dating sites or domain hunters.
So it was very hard to come up with a name. The name should be original, easy to remember and it should somewhat cover what the web site is about. So many things came to mind and were usually taken. So for the moment I have the names “AI Dating” which covers what it is about but it is a bit tech savvy and I’ve got the name “Dating Atmosphere” which is not too bad but it is quite long for a domain name. Dating Atmosphere was actually derived from datingsphere, but that was taken as usually. With the sphere in the name I wanted to represent the idea in the web application that you might be in the middle and potential dates are in spheres around you based on functional proximity (match percentage). Possibly this will be shown in such a way in the GUI if there is time to develop it that way. This is one of the aspects that is novel and not seen on other dating sites (afaik).
So for the moment the dating site can be found at: aidating.nl (for a Dutch audience), aidating.co.uk (for the UK audience) and datingatmosphere.com (possibly for an international audience).
If you have any suggestions for a nice name that has not been taken, please let me know ;-).
Liberating or debilitating? An examination of romantic relationships, sexual relationships and friendships on the Net
Posted by AI Dating | Filed under Literature
Monica T Whitty discusses the pros and cons of online dating in her article “Liberating or deliberating? An examination of romantic relationships, sexual relationships and friendships on the Net” in Computers in human Behavior. It points out some weaknesses and strengths of online dating which are very good to have in mind while implementing the AI Dating application. The following is the abstract:
Ever since the beginnings of the internet researchers have questioned its utility in developing and maintaining psychological healthy romantic and sexual relations. Advocates of the social presence theory and media richness theory purport that in leaner media individuals can be quite aggressive towards one another (e.g., in the form of flaming). In contrast, others believe that the lack of traditional cues in CMC can in fact be overcome and instead lead to more personal, intimate relationships.
As this paper will demonstrate, when we consider how beneficial it is to form relationships
online we also need to consider individuals’ characteristics (e.g., personality characteristics and physical attractiveness), the amount of time people spend online, the duration of online relationships, and how these relationships effect individuals’ offline activities and relationships. Overall, the view here is that online relationships can be empowering for many people; that is, cyberspace provides a unique environment for people to experience and learn about relationships and sexuality. (source: Computers in Human Behavior 24 2008)