14 posts and columns on love

On Valentine’s Day, Ol’ Fashioned Phone Calls Beat Video Chat for Long-Distance Love

in Social on February 14 at 7:10 am PT

There’s a reason Stevie didn’t sing “I Just IM’ed to Say I Love You.”
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CupidsPlay Pairs Social Gaming and Online Dating to Create Love Connection

in Commerce on February 23, 2011 at 8:30 am PT

This game of love doesn’t feature a guy sending a woman flowers, or a girl subtly flirting with the mailman. Rather, it’s a social game, where you try to find the man or woman of your dreams, one Cupid Coin at a time.

Liveblogging the Bing-Facebook Bromance: "Underdog" Search With a Little Help From Your Friends

in News on October 13, 2010 at 11:46 am PT

BoomTown motored on down to the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley on a fabulously sunny day to liveblog the latest Bing event. The software giant is updating its search service, announcing deep integration–part of a deal announced last year–with Facebook. The theme, according to Microsoft SVP Yusuf Mehdi, quoting the Beatles, search with "a little help from your friends."

The "Catfish"–A.K.A. the Other Facebook Movie–Dudes Speak!

in News on September 3, 2010 at 10:37 am PT

Last night, BoomTown got to grill some “Catfish”–as in the three young hipsters responsible for the new documentary about a twisted online romance on Facebook. That was for a Q&A after a screening in San Francisco, where I got to talk to Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and the film’s subject, Nev Schulman, about how they decided to make this rumination about identity in the digital age.

Online Privacy Follies Hit Home: BoomTown Was One of Those Exposed in the AT&T iPad Snafu

in News on June 11, 2010 at 12:15 am PT

Yesterday, it was revealed that AT&T–which usually and deservedly catches flak for its appalling dropping of voice calls–got caught up in a thorny security debacle related to the Apple iPad. The telecom giant had a flaw that allowed a group of computer experts to expose the email addresses and identity numbers of 114,000 owners of the popular tablet device. Including mine.

Viral Video: "Twilight" Is Back Again (This Vampire Just Won't Die, Will It?)

in News on March 12, 2010 at 2:21 am PT

The “Twilight” saga, which seems to have just ended with the release of the second film in the series, “New Moon,” in November, is baaaaack. And, of course, the Internet is huffing and puffing over this one, “Eclipse,” set for June, since its trailer just came out. Teenage girls may recommence their screaming.

Was Google Ad Designed for Viral Mockery? "Parisian Oops," "Is Tiger Feeling Lucky Today"…What Next?

in News on February 9, 2010 at 5:30 am PT

Yesterday, the day after after Google aired its first national commercial on the Super Bowl, an exec at a rival Internet company marveled at what high favorable scores the “Parisian Love” advertisement got, adding that the possibilities for spoofs were endless. “I have a feeling that making fun of it will probably be a good thing for Google,” sighed the exec, who would dearly like such attention. And, indeed, it did not take two seconds before the takeoffs on the ad–an unusually sentimental, but effective, ongoing story about love in Paris, using only Google’s iconic search box–appeared.

Liveblogging the Steverino (Ballmer) Show at Stanford: Soul Mates!

in News on May 6, 2009 at 4:40 pm PT

BoomTown went down to Silicon Valley’s most exclusive country club–also known as Stanford University–where Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took to the stage for a talk at Memorial Auditorium for the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar. Ballmer–who went to and then dropped out of Stanford Business School for a job at the fledgling Microsoft–was in an ebullient mood and even joked about problems with the Windows Vista operating system. Party on, Steve!
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A Match Made in Cyberspace: From Friendly Comments to Blog Love

in News on April 6, 2009 at 5:24 am PT

Don’t miss this weekend’s New York Times piece about the online love match made by a well-known law professor blogger, Ann Althouse, and a longtime commenter on her blog, Laurence Meade, who was smitten by her bon mots After reading the rest of the story about how they met in digital comments and their relationship slowly moved to analog, it’s hard to imagine that people are going to hook up any other way but online in the future.
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Google, Salesforce.com: Love Is in the Air

in News on December 8, 2008 at 4:01 pm PT

“We love everybody,” Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff said recently. “We even love Microsoft…. This is our core strategy, love.” Yes, the SAAS enterprise applications vendor loves everyone, but none more than Google.