Are you fond of rural life? Sally, from the UK, has discovered the advantages of living outside the city, but soon realized it's kind of hard to meet singles in such an environment. She started her own dating service called Country Couples, which is tailored especially to address the dating needs of people living in the UK country side.

The service features two types of memberships, a free membership and a full membership. The free membership gets you access to the site plus 5 flirts and 3 emails, enough to enable you to decide whether you wish to join as a full member. Free membership lasts for three months, after which you are offered the paid membership packages. The full membership, on the other hand, gets you access to all services within the site. I couldn't find a list of what these services are, but there were a couple of hints in the direction of chat, personal messages, personal photos and more. Full membership is charged at £6.50 for one month and £32.50 for six months (one month for free).

If you prefer the easy going life and fun of a local barn or pub, as opposed to the fast lane lifestyle of a wine or sushi bar in a crowded city, this is probably the way to go. Oh, and of course it would help if you are from the UK, unless of course Country Couples decides to expand and offer its services to other countries. A pretty logical next step in my opinion.

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After having been seen in public with Josh Hartnett, Rihanna has repeatedly denied rumors that she is dating the young handsome actor. In a statement for Allure magazine she said: "This is what really happened. He and my management, they have each other's contact information. I went to the New York club Pink Elephant, and he came by. All of a sudden, the next day, I'm seeing that we were kissing and hugging up each other."

Well, this was until recently the end of the story. Right now, word is she most recently said she is crazy about him and has so fallen for him. It seems the "babe from Barbados" is playing the oldest of the dating games - "I love you, I love you not". If they are really going to enter a romantic relationship, good luck to them. They look good together!

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In a joint effort, SpeedDate.com and Meebo introduced an app on the social network which enables users to visually communicate in the best speed dating fashion. This is their promotional video featuring some known bloggers using the new app for getting to know each other. Judging from the video, the new app is a lot of fun. Check it out:

SpeedDating is a free service, featuring what they call round robin dating, where each member gets a seven minute session with other candidates, all happening during a scheduled speed dating event.

Meebo is a service which enables people to join a social network of people who use all kinds of instant messaging services like AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ or Jabber. There are no downloads and installs, just a free registration, and you are on your way to being connected with others.

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Another online dating service is before us - FaceRomance.com . Basically, it's the usual, sign-up for free and make your profile. There are some very interesting characteristics though, like the IM service (kind of like ICQ), seeing who's online in a real time environment, and the ability to create a video profile. Registered members get to send emails, IM other members and chat, and use the rating system in order to rate other members and express opinion about them. There is something called Friendship Circles to which members can invite other members to join, and introduce new comers to the existing members of the friendship circle.

What may set this service apart is its search application. I mean, I know the more criteria you control, the more precise the results should be, but this is overwhelming - there are some 28 criteria which you can choose to set before a search. With parameters ranging from basic, like male/female, age, country, city, to parameters like body type, smoker, drinker, income, you should be able to find someone who fairly precisely matches your idea of a potential partner. Of the well known, veteran dating services, eHarmony comes to mind with its very complex precise profile search.

FaceRomance sounds like it means business, so if you are ready to face romance :), head on over to their site and register for free.

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We all know Match.com - it's been present in the online dating world ever since the very beginning. They're going to release their own Facebook applications called Little Black Book. This application will enable Facebook users to search for others on the network who also have profiles on Match.com, and while this may be interesting, there are a few things to pay attention to.

There are plenty of Facebook dating applications that are already active, for example Pose For a Date. Most don't communicate (or share) your data with other dating sites (everything stays home). You may want to think about this for a minute. Are you sure you want your friends, family or colleagues to be able to see your dating profile(s) from all over the Web? If you are concerned about complications, maybe it's a better idea to keep your dating and your "other" life separate.

If, however, you don't find this to be a problem, Match.com will help you find a potential match among Facebook members, who also have a Match.com profile. This could actually turn out to be interesting. The application officially goes live on Facebook on Thursday (December 20), so if you are interested you will have to wait until then.

Match.com have also released another service called Match My Friends which allows for existing Match.com members to create dating profiles, along with giving testimonials on why their friend is a good catch, for their friends on Match.com, with friends having to approve this in the end naturally.

Both developments are part of an effort to help people take the initial step towards online dating. It is this initial step that is usually the hardest, so having a little help from friends should entice other people to take part. So, got any friends who are thinking about online dating? Give them a little push, maybe that's all they need.

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