By Sree Sreenivasan
DNAinfo Contributing Columnist
You know Valentine's Day has changed when you see a tweet from the office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg (@NYCMayorsOffice) that says, "Happy Valentine's Day, NYC - and Happy Birthday, Mayor Mike!"
Here are some other new and new-ish digital connections to Valentine's Day that I've noticed today.
MAP YOUR VALENTINE: Google's new project, MapYourValentine.com, lets you use Google Maps to send an unusual Valentine's Day card, based on reminding your recipient a specific location from your past.
GOOGLE WEDDINGS: Speaking of Google, here's a new service, Google Weddings. "Explore how Google’s free tools can help you save time, stay organized and have fun while planning your big day." Lots of folks use various Google tools in different aspects of their lives, so why not one of the biggest days of their lives? Here Google has put together a single page to help with everything from website creation (Sites) to photo sharing (Picasa) to the RSVP and other planning (Docs).
VALENTUN.ES: A new app, Valentun.es, is an unusual combination of the web, romantic lyrics and cellphones. Here's how Jeff Novich, a former Columbia Journalism School student, describes it: Valentun.es lets you enter your Valentine’s name and his or her specific interests. It then searches lyrics to discover music that uses those words and then serves up streaming tracks so you can listen and hand-pick the final playlist. Valentun.es then delivers the playlist to their cellphone.
FBLOVEBUTTON.COM: FB Love Button, a site not connected to Facebook, raises an intriguing question: what if Facebook had a "love" button? It's really just a music video, but it captures an extreme version of today's dating possibilities. The lyrics begin, "If Facebook had a Love button, I would click it all the time Include you in my status updates, always keep you on my mind," and includes a tour of many buzzworthy goings-on these days (everything from Twitter to Quora to the Angry Birds game.)
NICHE DATING SITES: I like to say there's a community online for every human interest, so it's only natural there's a dating site for almost all of them, too. Here's a collection of niche dating sites, compiled by Gearlog (a dating site for those who want to date sea captains, anyone?). Some of them border on self-parody and some of them might, in fact, be non-existent - or just someone's dream of a dating site. An amusing collection, nevertheless. As I tell my wife about anything she finds on my computer, it's only research, honey, research.
VALENTINES FOR JOURNALISTS: Originally created in 2009 by Mark S. Luckie for his site 10000 Words (since bought by Mediabistro), the third edition of Valentines for Journalsits consists of tweets using the hashtag #journlove. Among my favorites: "You are my WHO WHAT WHEN WHY and WHERE," "My love is on the record," and "Not even a paywall could keep me from you."
Taken together, these digital Valentine's Day offerings show the kind of creativity that can focus on any news, news-ish or popular event. Some of these projects would have taken months to produce, but the technology changes have made these kinds of apps much easier - and faster - to create.
What did I miss? Post your comments below or on Twitter @sree.
Every week, DNAinfo contributing editor Sree Sreenivasan, a Columbia journalism professor, shares his observations about the changing media landscape.
