Social discovery app lets your decide how close you are
So, we used to “wear our hearts on our sleeve,” and that’s the way someone could tell whether or not we’re in love.
Now, we use GPS-enabled smartphones to find true love.
Not to worry, though: new mobile apps from a Canadian developer include enhanced privacy controls so you can send safe but still flirtatious messages on Valentine’s Day.
Singles Around Me (SAM) is a social discovery app that takes advantage of GPS-enabled search tools while giving users control over how precisely or not their location is displayed on a map. You could meet up with someone right next door, or hide your location and mask your feelings.
With newly updated BlackBerry, iPhone and Android compatibilities, the app has built-in tools to “displace” a user’s precise location by as much as several kilometres.
(By turning on or off various location tools that are in a smartphone, location is more or less precise: mobile devices often use a combi- nation of GPS, triangulated Wi-Fi signals or cell towers proximity, as well as other place and direction signals from internal hardware and loaded software.)
SAM users can set the app to reveal Exact, Hidden and now Approximate locations; if you are at home, you can hide your exact location but still put yourself “in the game” but just outside of your immediate neighbourhood, explains app developer, founder and CEO of the Ottawa-based company, Christopher Klotz.
“Our next generation apps are a testament to the new world of social discovery apps: they are smart, intuitive and safe for millions of users around the world.”
Of course, if you’re out and about and looking for love, you can switch your settings to exact location and meet people close by, in real life!
In an effort to also help singles improve their chances to flirt, meet and date wherever they are, Singles Around Me is also introducing a new Message Radius feature, and the location circle becomes like 40 or 80 km.
But once you’ve located that special someone, think about getting more personal, not more technical.
That’s the advice from David’s Bridal, a top bridal retailer with locations throughout Canada and the U.S.
It recently conducted a survey of its many brides, Mobs (mothers of the bride) and other matrimonial clientele.
What’s on Brides’ Minds puts a real damper on the seemingly popular trend of over-the-top tech enabled marriage proposals, for example.
Most brides prefer something much more intimate and low-key than a YouTube video, Jumbotron proposal or flash mob engagement party, David’s says.