I had a great conversation with Stephen Stokols, CEO and founder of Woome.com. I’ll post notes from our talk soon.
Did you see the article in the NY Times Love on Girls’ Side of the Saudi Divide?
Talking about how men and women are prohibited from co-mingling before marriage:
And certainly, practices like “numbering†— where a group of young men in a car chase another car they believe to contain young women, and try to give the women their phone number via Bluetooth, or by holding a written number up to the window — have become a very visible part of Saudi urban life.
… And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis have started buying special “electronic belts,†which use Bluetooth technology to discreetly beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex.
The strict interpretation of Islam is forcing singles to invent a whole new set of dating rules based on technology. Funny how that works.
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If only they could shake hands, in which case they could use the iBand.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~stefan/hc/projects/iband/
Online dating/Online marriage is huge in Saudi Arabia, and it seems to be quite well tolerated by the authorities there. at http://www.buzzarab.com we have quite a few members from Saudi Arabia.