Tech Dating 101

Single and wishing you could meet someone through friends — rather than, say, at a late-night pizza place? Enter TheDatable, a service that helps you create a network of eligible singles through Facebook. The basic premise of the this online dating option is that since you're meeting through shared connections, you're more likely to have things in common with each match. Even better? There's a much lower chance of fake or embellished profiles, because you can turn to mutual friends as a reference.

After creating a profile through Facebook, you can adjust the privacy settings to limit its visibility. And don't worry — none of your dating activity will be shared on Facebook. Then, once you've signed up, you can browse through your friends list to tag eligible friends, and those friends will be invited to share their eligible friends. From there, it's just one big snowball effect.

To put things in perspective, if you tag 50 datable people and they each tag 50 too, then you'd have access to 2,500 eligible singles within two degrees of separation. Plus, you can tap your taken friends as a resource too; if you tag them as Wings, then they'll be able to tag their single friends and introduce them to one another (and you).

What do you think? Would you be interested in using TheDatable service?

Here's a question every geeky gal wants answered: "Where can I meet a single geek?" For all the single ladies out there, here are 10 possible places to uncover scores of single geeks.

By the way, leave your other tech-related questions on our Facebook page, in the comments, or in our Ask a Geek Girl group.

1. Neighborhood coffee shops — Bring a book or your laptop and hang out at an independent coffee shop several times a week. You're more likely to see regulars (aka good-looking geeks) at local joints than you would at a chain. For an easy opener, ask if you can share the table, then spark up a conversation.
2. Night classes — Whether it's a dance lesson, coding class, or novel-writing seminar, classes are a great place to meet a future brainy mate. Pounce on the opportunity to partner up with the cute geek in the room, whether it's to complete a project, study, or edit each other's work.

See the rest of the list when you read more.

If the promise of more sex more often doesn't get you into online games, maybe this will: gaming could be a great way to meet guys. According to a new study by Online University, the odds of you scoring a date with someone who is committed and honest are higher if you're playing World of Warcraft than if you're trolling through hundreds of "matches" on dating sites. The study shows that online gamers spend more time on gaming sites than online daters spend on sites like Match.com and eHarmony (which means you have better odds of meeting more people more often), and WoW players are more likely to share personal information and feelings about themselves with fellow gamers than their "real-life" friends.

The cold, hard fact is there are 12 million people playing World of Warcraft online vs. dating sites, which boast just one million members. That translates to about three percent of the United States population playing online games. A bigger sea means more fish to catch with your button-mashing prowess. Game on!

When you start seeing someone new, there's little you want to do other than spend as much time with them, talking to them, and talking about them as possible. When it comes to constant communication during the workday though, too many checkins can get obtrusive — not to mention annoy your co-workers and be very, very distracting from the tasks at hand. We've all fallen prey to over-sharing with our significant others at one point or another, but in an effort to save your co-workers' sanity (and not to mention, increase your workday productivity), you should establish a few ground rules when it comes to communicating with your guy or gal during work hours.

• If you have unconfirmed plans, emails, and texts pertaining to your plans are allowed. Once you figure out what you're doing, it's time to shut it down. Or at least slow it down.
• If you don't have plans, a hello email is OK, but no more than four or five exchanges in any given "conversation," otherwise it's too much time and focus wasted.

To hear a few more rules to work with, just read more

Now you have a reason to love Twitter just a little bit more this Valentine's Day — a new study shows that Twitter users might be sexier than Facebook users. Well, at least they think so, anyway. The study, which polled 1,000 US men and women over 18, found that 40 percent of Twitter users would call themselves sexy vs. 28 percent of Facebook users. But let's face it — it's not just all about looks. Do those sexy Twitter users have actions to back up their claims? The study says yes, with 42 percent of Twitter users calling themselves "sexually adventurous" and 33 percent being a "skilled lover," while only 33 and 28 percent of Facebook users say the same, respectively. What's interesting, though, is that the study shows that 55 percent of sexy Twitter fanatics get it on at least once a week vs. 46 percent of Facebook users. That's not that big of a percentage gap, which means it's possible that Twitter users are just a bit more confident in calling themselves sexy than those that stick to Facebook.

But if you're single and ready to mingle this Valentine's Day, you'll have better odds if you start with Twitter — 53 percent of them have engaged in online flirtations vs. 46 percent of Facebook users. Happy hunting!

There are lots of ways to find your geeky love match online, but as they say on The Bachelor, not all online daters are there for the right reasons. According to a new report, online dating fraud rose 150 percent in 2011, making Internet dating sites a hotbed for fraudulent links and phishing scams.

With over three percent of interactions being of fraudulent nature — including those misrepresenting themselves to get personal information via links or spamming — how are you supposed to tell who is genuine and who isn't? I mean, you're there to meet new people, right? Some red flags to consider are the use of the word "love" early on in correspondence, someone urging you to take messaging off-site to email or Facebook (where hackers have easier access to your personal information), and weird syntax and language discrepancies. Basically, if their message sounds like one you might find in your spam folder, keep your guard up.

Of course, the only way you'll really be able to tell if someone is really into you, or if you're flirting with disaster, is to trust your gut instincts. If something doesn't feel right, it probably isn't.