Finding Love With GPS

SUSAN SCHWARTZ, The Gazette

Published: Monday, January 29, 2007

To broadcast that you are looking for love, whether it’s online or in personal ads or at singles events or in bars, to be out there like that, is to be way braver than I could ever be.

I can’t even bring myself to read personals or to look at online profiles: I always find it too sad. Even the ones that try to be jaunty or funny project longing and loneliness more than anything…. the rest of Susan’s article is here:

I guess the headline was a tongue firmly in cheek attempt at humor … but then again, I’ve had reporters call me and ask how much I’d charge to find something lost by the magic of GPS so that they could get a scoop. Perhaps some truly don’t know that GPS can not find anything. So much of the media is taken with writing about “spy” satellites that they forget that the principle of GPS is not that the satellite finds you, but that you find the satellites … and then with a little simple spherical trigonometry, since it knows where the satellites are, your GPS receiver can tell you where you are.

A few years ago when I lived in Tokyo these were very popular… they’re called LoveGetys, you can’t see very well in the picture but the undersides are pink for ladies and blue for men … at least conventionally oriented folks. You set yours to any of three levels of “interest” from “meet” to “get” (get what? Ummm I dunno, whatever, Susan could probably fill you in) and when a “gety” holder of the opposite color comes in range with the same interest mode set, both pocket ‘eggs’ light up and beep to let the carriers know that a true match is near. I can’t give you a real-world report since I never carried one … they were very popular with school girls and I didn’t want to be the only guy in my end of the train car having to make a decision how to handle my beeper going of in response to a 14 year old.

But Susan, imperfect technology as it may be, you have a better hope with the Love Gety than with GPS.