A recent study published in the U.S. journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy found that one-third of women who meet someone online have sex on the first date, and that 75% of the time a condom is not used. But that’s not all, 27% of the 584 women surveyed admitted to performing oral sex on the first date!

To be fair, although the study makes no mention of male habits in this capacity, I’m sure the numbers are likely to be very similar or even worse.

I must say that after a little pondering I’m not all that surprised. Typically the ones who are active online daters (both men and women) either have trouble meeting people face-to-face or haven’t had any luck using conventional methods and want to try something new and different. In either circumstance, a lot of sexual frustration is acquired over time so when the moment comes that he or she actually meets a prospective mate, the potential for intercourse is monumental.

That being said, people — women especially — need to have greater self-respect and make their partner earn their respect, affection, and ultimately, body.

Have you ever been browsing through << enter trendy social networking site here >> and seen a friend’s photo that made them look infinitely better than they usually do? If so, chances are high that the photo was touched up using image editing/manipulation software such as Adobe Photoshop.

While I do not condone activities like this that promote a sense of “false advertisement” if you will, I do believe that everyone should be on a level playing field in terms of being able to dress up like Halloween and portray themselves as nothing like the original. Luckily, for the non-Photoshop-skilled of the Internet, a new Web site has arisen to help you look as least like yourself as possible.

Pixoo, which is still in private beta, has dubbed itself the “profile picture enhancement service.” Come the end of this month, you too will be able to have yourself airbrushed like one of Hugh Hefner’s delectable bunnies for the low, low price of $20.

As far as the available modifications to your photo, you can specify just about anything that you want done, from skin color to clothing to setting and much more. About 15-20 improvements are made to each photo, and the turn around time is typically around 24 hours — although Pixoo staff will continue to work with you until you are satisfied with your fake self.

Their Web site has no examples posted and only contains a brief introduction to the service and a form to sign up for the private beta. To see an example of Pixoo, head on over to Techcrunch where one of the bloggers submitted founder Michael Arrington’s photo.

I think this is a ridiculous idea. If someone is self-conscious to the point where they’d pay $20 for a costume, they ought to seriously reconsider publishing their photo in such an open environment.

Google Blogoscoped is reporting that Google has begun rolling out Gmail 2.0, the latest and greatest version of its popular Gmail web application. You’ll know if you have access to the new Gmail 2.0 if you see options for “newer version” or “older version” in the upper right-hand corner when logged into your Gmail account.

In terms of the new features and functionality available within Gmail 2.0, the system supposedly runs much quicker, and there is a new, much more detailed “Contacts” section. The new Gmail Contact Manager includes the option to import photos from Picasa Web.

It is worth mentioning that the new features/functionality described above are merely from preliminary reports, and that there may be additional, undiscovered as of yet enhancements included with Gmail 2.0.

Here are some screen shots of the new version of Gmail:

Apple has launched an official directory of iPhone and iPod Touch web applications. The directory, which currently includes over 200 third-party Web-based iPhone/iPod Touch-optimized applications, breaks down into categories such as Games, News, Sports, and Weather. Each application offers a description, developer name, web address, and date of inclusion to the directory.

The iPhone and iPod Touch web applications directory can be found at apple.com/webapps. Those interested in developing their own applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch can read this guide on how to get started.

I for one am very excited about this directory. Although I’ve used a number of the applications included in the current directory, there are many I’ve yet to check out and more will constantly be added.

Now if only they’d let us write non-Web-based applications…

A new Facebook application has emerged called Mac Lover (Facebook login required) which allows all Apple fans — from casual iPod user to hardcore fanboy — to show off what Apple products they own and/or which ones they’d like to own. Products that users own are placed onto an iHave list, whereas wish list Apple goods go onto an iWant list. The products then appear in a box in your profile for all your friends to admire.

Fanboyishness aside, the application is pretty well built (although it doesn’t seem to be complete). Products are listed by type on various tabs and images are dragged around on the page and can be reordered however you desire.

Here are some screen shots of the Mac Lover application and its integration with my Facebook profile:

1) Mac Lover Facebook Application (edit view)

2) Mac Lover in my Mini-Feed

3) Mac Lover showing the goods in Facebook profile

I feel compelled to make a post thanking my wonderful Web host Media Temple. As many of you are undoubtedly aware, this site made the front page of both Digg and Reddit a few days ago for a post about Doda Elektroda. What you may not be aware of, however, is just how much stress that can put on a server.

This site is currently being hosted on Media Temple’s Grid-Server (gs) service. What this means is that jonholato.com is hosted on a network of interconnected servers, each sharing resources with one another. Thus, Media Temple measures server load for jonholato.com in terms of Grid Performance Units (GPUs). Each month my site is given a monthly allowance of 1000 GPUs. At the end end of each billing cycle the number gets reset to 1000, unfortunately it’s not an AT&T rollover type of situation.

According to Media Temple’s Web site, GPUs are calculated as follows:

A GPU is a measurement that derives from CPU time required by every single hit/request made to your (gs) Grid-Service. This includes your web server activity, programs, scripts and all associated parent and child processes across all nodes within our system (100’s of processor cores). The GRID system keeps track of all the measurements taken from your server and adds them to a running total which is calculated about once an hour. Each (gs) Grid-Service plan is given 1000 GPUs monthly, which is equivalent to continuously using 10% of a processor core for one month. This breaks down to 1.4 GPUs per hour.

To give you an idea of just how much stress was put on my server a few days ago, my average monthly GPU consumption since switching to Media Temple has historically been around 200. However, on Tuesday it was 258.

I don’t want to get into the specifics of traffic, but for the sake of illustration once this site hit the front page of Digg it was getting about 15-20 visits per second for over an hour:

Despite the influx of traffic, not once did this site become unresponsive or go down. My previous Web host (which I won’t mention by name) crashed three times when I hit the front page of Reddit for the first time — not even during peak hours — and I had to dismantle large sections of code to keep it running. After that I switched to Media Temple for the reputation it has of being able to withstand the Digg effect, and I must say it has more than lived up to it’s reputation.

So a big thank you to Media Temple, for being the Web host I can depend on.

Beginning Friday of this week, LinkedIn will start allowing individuals to upload photos to their profiles. The business-oriented site has been photo-free for the past four years, adopting a more conservative tone; however they claim that the most demanded feature from users was profile photos, so they have decided to give in.

LinkedIn’s Adam Nash says that many people recognize friends and colleagues more easily by face than by name, and that photos will provide for “richer professional connections online.” While that’s probably true, I can’t help but think of the negative repercussions that profile photos could have on such a wonderful tool as LinkedIn.

One of LinkedIn’s three main features is the potential for career advancement, or the ability to “discover inside connections when you’re looking for a job or new business opportunity.” In the past individuals have been able to find new or better jobs on LinkedIn based on their experience and skillset (and rightfully so). Adding profile pictures completely changes the game, as now decisions will in many cases be influenced on personal preferences. If a manager is looking at two profiles for potential candidates and finds one to be more attractive than the other, you can bet he or she will take that into account when making their decision. It’s unfortunate and it sucks, but it’s the way the world works.

I know it’s far too late for LinkedIn to reconsider this decision, so I will wish them the best in implementing this new feature. The good news, they have developed a pretty stringent array of privacy settings for profile photos, whereby a user can make their photo visible from everyone down to no one. The bad news, they have begun the trek away from the business-like and professional environment that created their 14 million user base.

On “The Word” segment of his September 19, 2007 “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert criticized the youth generation of today for doing nothing about the problems in society. It all started with the University of Florida student who was tasered during a John Kerry speech. The inaction of the student’s peers caused Colbert to make the following remarks:

“Look at these guys in the back,” Colbert said, pointing out one frame from the video of the event. “You don’t need a Fox body language expert to tell you that kid in orange is bored. He’s probably thinking something like, ‘I wish they’d stop tasering this guy so I could go home and watch this guy getting tasered on YouTube.’”

“One thing you can’t argue is that his cause was joined by hordes of no one. … Students used to be a rebellious bunch. … Today’s kids are so different.”

“The kids in that auditorium who sat idly by as their fellow student was seized, thrown to the ground, and tasered didn’t lack the courage to help,” Colbert added. “They’re just so used to watching videos like ‘Crazy guys thrown out of lecture hall’ that they didn’t know how to help other than to link to it. I’m sure that guy in the orange is going to spring into action as soon as he gets home and fires up his blog.”

“And that’s what’s so great about this new kind of activism,” Colbert remarked. “It’s convenient. Just like masturbation. It’s better than sex because it’s on your own time. So … make me proud, young people. Continue waging your protests from the polite distance of your home computers. Make ‘the Man’ wish he’d never visited your site. And if a fellow-student is denied the right to speak, remember, the best way to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him is by sitting alone in your seat.”

Here is the video in its entirety:

It’s sad to say but Colbert is absolutely 100% on point with these statements. Sure it’s an entirely different generation with an entirely different lifestyle, but the fact remains that the general public does not gather collectively to demand a particular action of the government. How many people complain online about the expanding of Bush’s spy program, or about the unending Iraq war? Thousands if not millions. But how many of them march on Washington to show their opposition? None. If millions of people were to converge on Washington demanding an end to the Iraq war and would not leave you can bet the troops would start coming home by Christmas.

While it is good that at least people are speaking out in some sort of fashion, writing about problems doesn’t go far enough. Your support and time needs to be given to those causes that you hold dear to your heart. So if you haven’t done anything to support something you believe in lately, I encourage you to go out and make a small gesture. Acting alone behind our computers won’t do anything except consume bandwidth, but acting together we have the ability to change the world.

Remember, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out, that our government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

A Turkish court ruled yesterday that telecom authorities must block access to video-sharing site YouTube, due to videos that allegedly insulted Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, President Abdullah Gul, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

This same incident happened in March, when Turk Telecom blocked access to YouTube for two days until a petition to the court ultimately removed the ban.

It seems the world of Internet censorship in Turkey hasn’t evolved much in the past few months. Let’s hope another issue like this will get them to consider the topic and draft some legislation to keep it uncensored.

Google announced earlier this year that they would be adding support for presentations to their existing Google Docs suite of word processing and spreadsheets. Last night, they delivered on their promise as Google Docs now handles presentations.

Presentations — the like the existing documents and spreadsheets — are accessible from any location as they are stored online. Additionally, the same Google Docs collaboration capability is built-in and changes to presentations can be seen in real time.

When you start a brand new presentation there are a number of themes you can select from, otherwise you can always import an existing presentation and edit that as well. Perhaps the coolest feature, though, is the ability to walk your remote audience through your presentation in real time. By clicking a link to follow along, all parties will be able to chat about the presentation collectively.

It’s great to see Google adding to their office suite and creating some more competition for Microsoft. By no means will this ever become a replacement for PowerPoint, especially in the corporate setting, but for personal use at home Google’s suite is starting to make a name for itself as a free alternative to Microsoft Office and its massive price tag.

To check out Google Presentations and the rest of the Google Doc applications, simply browse to docs.google.com.