Planning Valentine's Day Online
— -- If not even love can tear you away from your computer this Valentine?s Day, don?t despair - it?s possible to plan a romantic time without ever leaving your desk.
Though we do suggest you get up from your desk to enjoy it.
Say It With — Something Cute
The basic Valentine starts with a card and flowers, and you can find those both easily online.
There are about a zillion e-cards sites, from missives for Mac lovers at apple.com to images of drug paraphernalia at virtualweed.com. Neither of those are romantic, but the cards at Blue Mountain Arts are. The Blue Mountain cards are also much more customizable than the average e-card - you can choose different animations, sounds, even little graphics that track your mouse.
There?s also a new kind of file attachment at the Blue Mountain card shop. You can attach real chocolates, flowers or gifts to the card, which almost makes up for not being able to prop it up on a desk. (The gifts get sent through the mail.)
Either cute or bizarre, depending on how you look at them, the cards at virtualkiss.com are also worth a try. The site specializes in kissing, so they?ve got ?kiss stories? and such, but they also have tons of e-cards featuring plump, disembodied lips in a host of compromsing positions.
Once you?ve got the cards, get the flowers. But don?t go to 1800Flowers.com, the default destination; they?re expensive and unimaginative. Patronize a local florist instead by going to switchboard.com, punching in ?florist? as a business category and your city and state.
Single — Don't Despair
No, not everyone looking for love out on the Web is a criminal - or even desperate. Many ordinary people have turned to online personals to fill that empty space between their keyboards and their souls.
There are dozens of online personals service out there, from Jdate (matches a Jewish mother could love) to Dark Wyccan?s Goth Personals, for those who like their romance a little darker.
The best of the pay-for-play personals service is Match.com. They?ve been around since 1995. They?re costly, at $24.99 a month, but they let you shop around before you buy. Their free before-you-pay search function has a really nifty proximity search where you can request to see only people within a certain distance from your zip code (to avoid those problematical long-distance Internet relationships.)
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