This is a small device much like a pager but is used to detect when you are in proximity of people who share the same interests as you. It comes with a program that you run on your PC to build a personality profile, a series of questions which you answer that describe your interests. Ie, favorite foods, favorite movie genres, hobbies, etc... The computer uploads this profile into the Detect-A-Friend and you put it in your pocket or purse. This device then uses RF and constantly transmits, and monitors for other Detect-A-Friends in your proximity. When it detects another nearby it uses fuzzy logic and natural language processing to determine a compatibility index between you and the other. If the scores are close enough, the Detect-A-Friend vibrates/beeps (and so does the other person's). You then pull out your Detect-A-Friend and on the little display screen it has a physical description of the owner of the other one (and vice versa). You can then look around, find that person, and strike up a conversation about things you know that person will have an interest in.
-- DeathNinja, Jul 21 2003

Cellular Matching Service http://www.halfbake...0Matching_20Service
pretty close to this idea by [BartJan] [krelnik, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Real Life Attribute Getter http://www.halfbake...0Attribute_20Getter
Also pretty close to this idea by [Qinopio] [krelnik, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Lovegety (Wired Magazine) http://www.wired.co...,1284,12899,00.html
[krelnik, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Baked by various fiendish Japanese devices.
-- DrCurry, Jul 21 2003


I'd love this (but so far have only heard about gay people detectors).
-- phundug, Jul 21 2003


The best known of those was called the "Lovegety". It also spawned a halfbaked version called the "waugsgety" which has since been deleted. See link for details about Lovegety.

Also seems somewhat close to being redundant with the two ideas I linked below, "Cellular Matching Service" and "Real Life Attribute Getter."
-- krelnik, Jul 21 2003


I wish I had left that one up. I also did one for cell phones called "Cell Mate". I just liked the name.
-- waugsqueke, Jul 21 2003


// I wish I had left that one up. //

Me too, if only for someone's "waugsgetysburg address" pun.
-- snarfyguy, Jul 21 2003


Just for you, snarf.

------%<------

<Recorded message crackles in wearer's ear> Four score hours and seven ago a 'baker brought forth on this forum a new notion, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women of the 'bakery are interested in meeting each other.

Now we are engaged in a great festival of pointless idea conception, testing whether that notion or any notion so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

We are met on one of the great web fora of the world. We have come to dedicate a portion of our time as a final testing-place for those who here gave their working lives that that notion might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave 'bakers, living and deleted, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract, by croissant or fishbone. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honoured ideas we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these ideas shall not have been in vain, that this notion under a stale half-a-croissant shall have a new birth of freedom, and that amusement of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. </Recorded message crackles in wearer's ear>

-UnaBubba, Nov 12 2002
-- waugsqueke, Jul 21 2003


With some subtle re-gigging the device could be turned into an enemy detector. Program to detect vegetarian, politically correct, terrorist sympathisers and anybody more handsome than yourself.
-- martynwyatt, Mar 18 2005



random, halfbakery