Funny Relationship Advice, Part 1: Marriages

And lastly, if you cannot trust your spouse-to-be with your phone, then you have no business getting married.

Augmented Reality Speed Dating Platform

By Rob C.

Inspired by the November 15th 2016, AMA Toronto panel discussion entitled The Future Today: How Marketers Can Leverage Emerging Technologies, I would like to present my ideas on the components necessary in creating a functional AR speed dating solution.

AR = Augmented Reality. If you have already played Pokemon Go, you know how that works. If you have not then check out the short film below, "Sight", which shows what some theorize the future of Augmented Reality might look like.




 

Regarding the AMA Event – held at 345 Adelaide St W after work;  I was impressed by the people I met there and the synergistic ideas in the room regarding overcoming the challenge of getting adopters and making mavens for phone apps and other bits of innovative technology. A top Toronto B2B marketing consultant Tania Stadnik organized the event and introduced the speakers. Personally I was more stimulated by all the hip Toronto event bloggers in the audience, (Shanny, Raymi and Wedding Girl) than I was with the three well know ‘thought leaders’' on stage, Adam Green from Google Canada, Zahra Rajani the VP Digital Experience at Jackman Reinvents, and Kevin Keane from Brainsights.  They're okay but I don't read their stuff the same way I soak up the girl's blogs - but that's me.

In the hour long talk that followed these marketing idealists discussed the many distracting elements of technology which discourage people from adopting new systems and practices that could be very beneficial to their organization. In the hierarchy of change management there are early adopters and mavens at the top and and the slow pokes at the bottom who are still using their blackberries. The secret is to find managers in between that have shared goals and to remove roadblocks at all levels of the enterprise. And of course, the unspoken truth is that the application itself must have a dead simple interface and be easy to use and understand and be immediately rewarding to the user.

Augmented Reality Dating Programs need Facebook API

We here at True Love Bites we been wrapping our brains around how to launch this city’s first augmented reality singles event after seeing the short film, "Sight" ensconced on Laura Bilotta’s Single in the City blog about augmented reality dating and reading there about the call for developers to make apps for the new device.  We have concluded that in order to get any details worth reporting in a wingman app of any description, the software would have to access the massive database of personal information stored at Facebook, failing that Twitter, and after that Instagram.

The short film Sight was created by students Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, the film explores the potentials and hazards of Augmented Reality ‘wingman’ apps. But the amount of data that a male user is seeing could only come from a sophisticated social network like Facebook – no dating profile user is going to put that much information about themselves in a dating profile.

An AR enabled speed dating event however encourages everyone to participate in the tech exercise. Sure there’s the usual wine and cheese and the usual long table with men on one side and women on the other, but this speed dating event is very different. Our Meetup is a smart phone powered free WiFi enabled occasion; app users also need to enable the audio speaker function and share a headset – cool huh? Like the two dogs in the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp eating the spaghetti. 

Everyone’s smart phone must download the AR app, they then sign in using their Facebook profile, which will then comb through their Facebook profiles for mutual interests. So when the app users meet the program will use audio (voice track) to help them more meaningfully explore their commonalities in the few minutes they have together.

Which oddly enough is a bit like Facebook stalking each other at the same time, in person. Whatever.

So let’s walk through this…  At the AR speed dating event, using the technology, the two app users would meet for the first time and rather than exchange pleasantries about their jobs and lives and career aspirations etc. all these boring details, private details, the app would instead remind them both of a café in a remote city where they both ate once, years apart (as per Facebook), and ask them to recall the best thing on the menu, or anything they can remember about the place. In this way, their true personalities are more easily discovered and the exchange is altogether more meaningful. 

The program would also streamline the path for follow-up encounters by suggesting ‘equal distance’ restaurants or other suitable meeting places (maybe some sponsorship opportunities here) and just as it paved the path to friendship, it’s a safe perishable conduit that’s easily terminated by one or the other party if they do not like each other after their first date.

It’s a far cry from what’s possible with the contact lens powered equipment seen in the short film "Sight", but its safer too – it’s a simple Facebook API powered AR solution.  Developers? Are you working on this? Please comment below if you have ideas about creating a dating AR interface.

Politics, Love, Trumpites and Dealbreakers

So... Donald Trump is the president elect.

Now imagine going on a first date with a Trumpite (Trump supporter) and not knowing that they are a Trump supporter when you agreed to the first date on POF, OKCupid or whatever personals website you use.

Depending on your political leanings, someone being a Trump supporter might be a Dealbreaker for you. (Dealbreakers are things you learn about a potential mate that cause you to want to dump them immediately. After all if you spot something wrong with them that will ultimately ruin the relationship, don't you owe it to yourself - and them - to break it off immediately?)

Or maybe you really love Trump (which makes you a Trumpite) and dating a fellow Trumpite sounds like an exciting prospect to you. And dating a Hillary supporter or any other sane person messes with your insane-Trump-loving brain.

Thus there a number of things people should check before they even go on a first date.

Possible Dealbreakers

#1. Are they a Trumpite?

#2. Are they a smoker?

#3. Are they an alcoholic or a drug addict?

#4. Do they support a woman's right to choose?

#5. Are they an omnivore? (Because dating a vegan can sometimes be a dealbreaker, while some vegans refuse to date omnivores.)

#6. Are they poor? (For golddiggers, this can be a dealbreaker if they only want to marry a rich person.)

#7. Are they gainfully employed? (For people who want to avoid golddiggers, this can be a dealbreaker if the other person doesn't even have a job.)

#8. Do they have any STDs? (Seriously, people need to be more upfront about this.)

#9. Are they a racist bigot / anti-semite / sexist pig? (Although the difference between this and a Trumpite is very little.)

#10. Are they just really stupid and stupid people annoy you? (Again, Trumpites...)



In other news, here are some amusing Trump memes.