Wireless dating or Bluedating (from Bluetooth) is a form of dating which makes use of mobile phone and bluetooth technologies. Subscribers to the service enter details about themselves and about their ideal partner, as they would for other on-line dating services. When their mobile phone comes in the vicinity of that of another subscriber (a radius of about 10 meters) the phones exchange details of the two people (the vicinity can be a public and populated space too, like a pub, a street, plaza and so on). If there is a match then they are alerted and can seek each other out and directly chat using text bluetooth (bluechat). Settings can include an option which restricts alerts to subscribers who have a friend in common.

There is an implementation of wireless dating called Serendipity (the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for) being pioneered by MIT's Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. (Reported in New Scientist Magazine 20-Mar-2004.). Another open source study called "spontact" will be available at the end of 2004. Spontact comes with ICQ support.

A group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) have developed a dating application called Bluedating running on mobile phones with Bluetooth. Further implementations include SmallPlanet's CrowdSurfer and MobiLuck. Speck uses its own appliance, but bases exchange of data on bluetooth technology, which might make a port to cellphones possible at one point.

See also

• piconet
• scatternet
• toothing

External links

• http://smg.media.mit.edu/personals/
• http://perth.mit.edu/~ching/pubs/ScatternetAlg.pdf