Blogs bloom as conduit for love connections

Scholars either bemoan them or laud them as the future of journalism.

Their spontaneity can be enlightening or infuriating.

Web logs empower people with the potential to communicate with the world. But Adam Norris, 18, loves them because they help him meet girls.

"I troll around once or twice a day, typically for about an hour total, and the contacts I make during that time keep my dating life lively," Norris says.

While some analyze the significance of "blogging" - a verb that combines "Web" and "log" - millions of teens and young adults hammer their keyboards as vanguards in the evolution toward greater interconnection.

More than 10 million blogs hover in cyberspace according to BlogPulse, which tracks blog activity. Their proliferation is subversive or democratic, depending on whom you ask, and their accessibility renders them a constant source of news, usually opinionated.

But for many younger than 30, a blog is as much an ace in the dating game as a flashy car or a nice smile. Not everybody is looking to influence society.

Norris, a self-described geek with a slight frame and, until recently, no car, says he has had better luck with women in the past year. The reason? His discovery of MySpace, a blogging conduit that allows anyone to register, create a personal profile with pictures, and be linked to people anywhere in the world.

Norris says he has more than 300 "friends" on his MySpace account, and he has communicated with each of them.

"Over the past year, I've met so many people I'd never have met otherwise," he says. "My social skills are so much stronger now, and it began with the sort of training that blogging provided."

Norris says he used to browse the Web indiscriminately, but now his approach is more streamlined.

"At this point, I pretty much just look at pictures and locations. I want to talk to women that I find attractive and who live in my area," says Norris, a native of Fontana, Calif.

Harnessing the power of the Internet, especially blogs, in pursuit of relationships may pay dividends. Norris estimates that he has had dates with 15 to 20 women this year, all met through his MySpace account. The year before, he says he was "basically shut out."

Norris is at the more extreme edge of America's under-25 crowd, many of whom have not known life without the Internet. Between 2 percent and 7 percent of Internet users publish their own blogs, according to a 2004 survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Thefacebook, a popular blogging network exclusive to students at about 800 colleges, records more than 5,000 new members every day. It differs from many blogging networks because it curtails the number of people who can peruse a person's page, first by filtering out those not attending a member university and then by allowing access only to those whom a blogger specifies as a "friend." Friends who can visit a blogger's Thefacebook page often range from a handful to several hundred.

Blogs in less sheltered settings have more unfettered access. Without restrictions on visitors, word about compelling blogs can travel rapidly via e-mail, an almost instant word of mouth. But most blogs have dozens or hundreds of hits a week, not thousands.

And not everyone is merrily speeding along the information superhighway, says Karen Mossberger, public administration professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Research she is conducting for a book indicates that about 40 percent of America is not online regularly, and she contends that a digital divide is intensifying a disconnection between people of varying social and economic backgrounds.

"The Internet can open up the world for people," Mossberger says. "But if living in poor communities gives people few opportunities to use technology, then you have the same social divisions America has now, only deepened and more firmly locked in."

James Katz, a Rutgers University communications professor who co-authored "Social Consequences of Internet Use," views blogging sites as a natural evolution in human communication.

He points to blogging as one way the Web has altered how people engage in activities from investing to politics. The Internet's power also has changed dating rituals.

For young people, blogs are "the virtual equivalents of social clubs, fraternities and sororities," he says. "Blogging serves the same social functions but does so more effectively in terms of offering greater choice." Blogging also can be more practical than meeting somewhere, and it allows bloggers to talk to people beyond their own neighborhood.

Katz dismisses concerns that blogging in search of love makes people too reliant on technology.

"Just as the automobile radically transformed people's lives socially, so, too, has the Internet had a gigantic effect," he says. "This is another example of how technological innovation meets people's needs."

Wrong Watermark on Counterfeit $100 Bills

AFAYETTE, Ind. - Bartender Brandy Tuczynski knew the $100 bill a customer gave her was fake when she held it up to the light and saw Abraham Lincoln's face instead of Benjamin Franklin's on the watermark.

The bartender's attention to detail helped lead investigators to a Lafayette man who police say had been passing the bogus bills since June.

Earl H. Devine, 22, faces four counts of forgery and four counts of theft. He was released from Tippecanoe County Jail on $10,000 bond Wednesday, a jail officer said Thursday.

Police first arrested Devine July 31 after he allegedly used a counterfeit $100 bill to pay for drinks at Chumley's. He was arrested again Tuesday on charges he tried to pass a similar bill at a Lafayette drugstore.

"The watermark on the bills don't correspond with the correct president's face," said Jeff Rooze of the Lafayette Police Department. "They all have Abe Lincoln's watermark, which is on the $5 bill."

Security features such as color shifting ink in the lower right-hand corner and a security thread also were missing, and the paper had red and blue dots indicating they had been made with an inkjet printer, police said.

No telephone listing was available in the Lafayette area for Devine to obtain comment.

Man accidentally runs over wife twice

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 75-year-old German was so shocked he had accidentally run down his wife he started forward and drove over her again, authorities said on Wednesday.

Police in the western town of Bad Nauheim said the man compounded his 73-year-old wife's misery after an onlooker told him he had just run her over while backing out of a parking space. The woman was rushed to hospital and survived.