Posted on Sat, Dec. 29, 2005

Looking for love in all the fun places

BY JUDITH H. BERNSTEIN

Newsday

Link to Original Article

There's no loneliness like holiday loneliness. But noisy bars, tired singles scenes and pathetic matchmaking attempts by friends and family rarely conjure up Prince Charming or Ms. Right.

If you're on the hunt for a date for New Year's Eve and beyond -- or just looking to meet up with friendly folks -- these entrepreneurs have been busy cooking up new ways for you to meet someone.

A GRAPE DATE

Wine lovers don't have to make a Sideways-like odyssey through California to meet other oenophiles. Just log onto GrapeDates.com, which launched in January. Here, you're promised ''a touch of sophistication,'' along with your search for the perfect someone.

Despite the name, Grape Dates.com, says spokeswoman Ayelet Margolin, ''is not just a dating site.'' You can also buy newly released wines or get news about food and wine pairing parties, wine tastings and other opportunities to meet others off-line. If dating's on your mind, use the site's tools -- My Vine List (to organize your contacts with other members), video profiles, cell phone alerts and video chat to meet up. The site's free for now, Margolin says, while membership remains at fewer than 100,000 people

POD DATING

As iPods have evolved from being just music players, so have the uses for these ubiquitous little gadgets. And it didn't take long for someone to figure out a way to link iPods to dating.

PodDater.com, launched just three weeks ago, lets you craft a profile, search for matches and download them to any portable media player that plays the MP4 format. While you also can browse for matches on PodDater.com, using an iPod with video capability will allow you to see short videos of potential dates without being tethered to your PC.

ON THE PROWL

'We're dating in high gear, jumping to the most important thing -- the phone call,'' says Jonathan Ressler, chief executive of Zogo.com, which allows you to meet up with potential dates by cell phone.

Using Zogo, you can view a member's photo and profile on your cell to ensure you want to meet before making the call, and the service keeps both phone numbers private. But perhaps the most interesting feature of Zogo is Prowling, which lets you search for people in your immediate vicinity -- or lets them find you. So whether you're at a lounge where the pickings look slim and you want to boost your meet-up options, or you're at New York's Metropolitan Museum and want to share your thoughts on the Van Gogh exhibit, all you do is click the ''Start Prowling'' button on your Web-enabled phone to launch the service. ''Right now, the service is free,'' Ressler says. ''We want to make sure that everybody has a great experience with it before we start charging.'' The Zogo.com site says the service will cost $12.95 a month for 30 minutes' talk time.

TAKING ACTION

If you're in a Blue State state of mind and you live in a Red State, it can get pretty lonely. To the rescue comes ActforLove.org, which ''lets you take action while getting action,'' as its website says.

Founder John Hlinko, who works as a Washington-based political consultant, says ActforLove, which launched in 2003, has signed up more than 20,000 members and was hopping just before the 2004 presidential election and again this fall, as debate heated up in the nation's capital over the Iraq war and the I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby indictment.

''People are passionate about politics. And it's only a short step to another type of passion,'' says Hlinko, who met his wife on Match.com while he was doing research on how to create a dating website.

It's free to post a profile on ActforLove; charges ranging from $10 to $30 a month kick in for additional services (such as being able to actually contact someone you'd like to demonstrate alongside at the White House).