You may think we're a heartless bunch here at TechRadar but we're really not. And what better day to prove it than this, 14 February, St Valentine's Day?
We've rounded up the cream of the romantic tech crop for today's One More Thing, so prepare to be dazzled, amazed and ready for some business time by the end of it… Enjoy.
Music to watch girls by – Facebook and Spotify's deep and meaningful love for each other reaches heady new heights today as they reveal two playlists based on the songs people are listening to when they hit 'in a relationship', and what they listen to as they hit 'single' again the next day. Jason Derulo for the former, Mumford and Sons for the latter. Ick. [LOVE | HATE]
Modern mixtape – You'll have to have left things pretty late to find this useful, but We7 and Match.com have come up with a highly impersonal Valentine's messaging services that sends a relevant pre-built musical mix to someone you fancy, your cheating ex or the one that got away with one of six pre-written messages. Ick. [We7]
But will it? - Today might not be the best day to actually try this out, but Love Will Conquer is a nifty new web app that collects geo-tagged tweets mentioning 'love' and 'hate' so you can see just how sappy/bitter each country is. The name's a bit of a spoiler though, eh? [TNW]
One for next year – There's no time to set this up for 2012, but V-Day 2013 could be a corker if you start plagiarising this slightly rapey Rube Goldberg machine now. Mindless giggling, creepy backward walking and rohypnol not required. [The Sun]
Sex-E-book – The Joy of Sex is now an ebook so you can – and this is a direct quote from the press release folks - "read it on the train without raising any eyebrows". And you wonder why you're spending Valentine's Day alone. Taster ebook is free, while the full Joy can be yours for £4.99 from the Kindle, iBookstore, Kobo, Waterstone's and Google ebookstores. [PR]
Wud I lie 2u? – Depressing statistic of the day: 18 per cent of 18 to 25 year olds have ended a relationship by text message. Meanwhile, 31 per cent of Acision's 2,000 survey respondents admitted they like to flirt by SMS. The other 69 per cent are liars. [PR]
If you seek Amy's Valentine's gift - The most searched for colour of Valentine's lingerie online is black, followed by red, pink and white according to Hitwise. And how long did your lover spend online choosing those really thoughtful flowers and or gifts? 7 minutes 25 seconds. Don't you feel better knowing that? [Hitwise]
DON'T LET YOUR HOT DATE GO UP IN SMOKE THIS VALENTINES DAY – So suggests our favourite Valentine's Day press release of the year, which implies that the best Valentine's Day gift is the gift of life, also known as a smoke alarm. Jewellery is also good. [LFB]
Literal phone sex – Spending Valentine's Night apart from your lover? This could be the app for you (but please please don't tell us about it). An ex-Microsoft employee hacked an Xbox controller to vibrate to music (Barry White, presumably). Microsoft wasn't too keen on the X-rated potential of such a hack so he went rogue and created an app along the same principles. Download it for iOS and Android and let your long-distance Valentine control the vibrations of your phone. [Mashable]
Hard to please – Google has got in on the V-Day action through the medium of the Google Doodle. If you haven't already schmalzed your way through the lovely little animation today, we've embedded it for you below. Anecdotal evidence we just made up suggests that the sale of skipping ropes went up 6,900% after it hit the web. [Google]
