Inglês · Interpretação de texto, Notícias e resenhas

Christoph Oswald has no problem approaching women.

As he makes his way through the crowd at his favorite Frankfurt club,

his cell phone scans a 10-meter radius for “his type”: tall, slim, sporty,

in her 30s-and, most important, looking for him, a handsome

36-year-old software consultant who loves ski

holidays.

Before he reaches the bar, his phone starts vibrating and

an attractive blonde appears on its screen. “Hi, I'm Susan,” she

says. “Come find me!” Christoph picks her out of the crowd, and

soon they're laughing over a drink. Both Christoph and Susan have phones equipped with

Symbian Dater, a program that promises to turn the cell phone

into a matchmaker. By downloading Symbian, they installed a

20-character encrypted code that includes details of who they

are and what they're looking for in a mate. Whenever they go

out, their matchmaking phones sniff out other Symbian Daters

over the unlicensed, and therefore free, Bluetooth radio

frequency. If profiles match up, the phones beep wildly and

send out short video messages.

(NEWSWEEK, JUNE 7 / JUNE 14, 2004)

According to the passage, Symbian Dater is a program that