Today my calendar beeped with a message, “On Monday you will being to exhibit greater happiness mental clarity and curiosity.” I had to think a minute before I remembered I set the alarm last fall when my dad did my astrology chart.

Recently I asked him what he thought of an astrology chart I received from a prominent astrology-based dating site. Here’s my dad schooling me on the different software platforms used by companies selling horoscopes, including the kind used by some matchmakers. Agree or disagree, now you know where I get my opinionated nature from.

You were born at 6:14am, but, that’s not going to change the attached horoscope much. I don’t know what pre-packaged software is used, but it’s very basic and not very helpful. Generating such a report involves entering the time, date and place of birth and executing the file. I would expect that an astrology dating site would provide some greater focus on the relationship factors in a chart. It raises the question of whether the site developers know anything about astrology, or are just trying to market another angle.

This is western chart, and not a sidereal one, the style I use. The difference is that in a sidereal chart all planets move backward about 23 degrees from their tropical positions. In your case, the sun remains in easy going Libra in both charts and that gives pre-packaged astrology a good starting point as those born under a Libra sun have distinct (and positive) personality traits (ed note: yay!)

Overall, I wouldn’t build a dating business on such flimsy astrology as reflected in the printout you attached. I have attached a report using your birth data, also published by hitting enter. The introductory text and a lot of the shorter information is from Solar Fire, a widely used program. The more extensive information on the result of planets in certain house is material I have written. While it may be better in some respects than much of the pre-packaged stuff that is out there it IS A FAILURE in terms of providing useful astrological information.

It’s only the second horoscope I’ve produced by this method and it shows, to me, why I had good sense in abandoning efforts for point and click astrololgy. Beside the fact that it needs editing, and neglects important information such as the exaltation of Mercury, the planet of communication and ruler of your horoscope, in the ascendant or important rising sign location.

Basically, pre-packaged astrology always fails for the same basic reason. Every planetary placement, every planet, introduces both positive and negative results. Nothing is all good, or bad. Pre-packaged interpretations concentrate on the positive, which is important, but fail to point out the weakness in the chart, those areas in life where you have to be careful and work hard to avoid obvious pitfalls and mistakes.

What I tried to do, and it doesn’t work out well, is to start the interpretative language with positive things, and then to note what might happen if the planet was weakened in some way. This is doomed to not work as astrology is rather complex, it’s difficult to find common language to describe the enormous variety of possibilities, and almost impossible to give clients the information they need to decide on the basis of a written report if they are to use the positive, or the negative, information.

All in all, your chart as published using my interpretative files in Solar Fire, succeeds in some places, and falls down disastrously in many others. I wouldn’t pay much attention to it, and especially not to let any of the negative information enter your mind. It’s a exercise using a program approach that doesn’t work, and that’s why I never use it. What it does show is that if an astrology dating site was to use astrology in some form that the simplistic stuff you got for free is worth no more than you paid for it.

Astrology can provide a far meatier range of insights into the mind and character, but this should be done person-to-person, and not by printout, as it takes years of study to be able even to read a pre-packaged chart interpretation and not make any serious mistakes.

As one of the best know Vedic astrologers said in a tape I listened to last week, and I shared with your cousin, the horoscopes of anyone who has achieved anything worthwhile in life shows problems and challenges which must be overcome by strength of character, by intelligence, by persistence, by refusing to admit failure or defeat, by weathering storms until the weather clears. Problems are crucibles to test us, and to make us even stronger. At the end of life we should be able to face even death with equanimity, and without letting fear or anxiety shake our composure.

I hope astrology-based dating sites will chime in with their thoughts on the above.

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1. Facebook Reveals The Most Popular Time For Breakups
2. Matchmaking With Handwriting Analysis
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Moonit is a free web application that provides insights into Generation Y users’ personal and professional relationships based on astrological and psychological underpinnings.

I’ve been receiving their periodic emails and I can see how the Gen Y crowd would find the site compelling. Love the site design too, nice and clean.

Dana Kanze is the CEO. Her future father-in-law is a seasoned astrologer who famously predicted the stock market crash of 1987 to gain the moniker “The Moon Man.”

The Moonit assessment’s quantitative and qualitative components are driven by a proprietary predictive algorithm, which reveals the overriding dynamic of that relationship. This unique algorithm was co-developed by Astrolabe—the leading software provider for professional astrologers.

Over time, the site learns more about users via a progressive psychological profiling process and refines the algorithm using a built-in, self-learning mechanism based on user feedback. If a user doesn’t know a friend’s birth date, Moonit allows users to import their contacts from Facebook, which typically contains this information.

I enjoy learning about astrology-based matching and feedback systems. We have 2,000 years of experience with them vs. less than 100 for the theory behind today’s popular matching algorithms. Which do you think is more effective?

Go ahead and moon someone at Moonit.

Related posts:

1. Moonit Makes Sense of Existing Relationships
2. How to Get the Man of Your Dreams.com Introduces Virtual Relationship Coaching
3. Astrology-Based Matching Growing Up

A WIRED writer says they disregard anyone on dating sites who believes in astrology. The tv show The Big Bang Theory ties it all together. You’ve got well-intentioned geeks, a hot blonde and, well watch the clip.

Given the number of people who sit in front of the tv watching reality television, someone should start a dating show on cable. Wait, Comcast tried that, and there is another guy trying to make it happen. Browse video profiles and vote with you mobile phone. Not much different than Idol, so why hasn’t this taken off yet?

Related posts:

1. Lets All Just Date Virtual People And Be Done With It
2. Astrology-Based Matching Growing Up
3. Stop Date Rape with Interactive Television

Kelli Fox at The Astrologer says:

We have an astrology match making web service we supply to dating sites. We don’t ask any questions and only require a members birth date. We provide bar graphs, meters and reports.

I’ve talked to several companies offering astrological matching services over the years. I personally feel strongly about astrological-based matching, but most services appear too new-agey for most dating sites to consider adopting. The site that manages to take astro-matching to the masses on a mainstream dating site might do very well.

I find it a bit disheartening that most astro-matching sites feel the need to see how you would match up against celebrities, but that’s just the pitch that drives generic consumer adoption. Forget about reality, how do I match with Britney?

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