They say technology isolates us from each other, but that's not true: surveys show that one in every four users admits using their PDA or cell phone for meeting people or starting conversations. Today, Saint Valentine would also use one of those.

by Darío Pescador

A couple of thousand years ago, about this time of the year, Romans held their Lupercalia, some funny orgies honoring the god Pan. Boys and girls chose their playing partners by taking a ticket in a drawing.

But that was then, and this is now. Today, everything has been reduced to a cheesy parade of greeting cards, flowers, chocolates and unbridled commerce, supposedly honoring a poor late 3rd-century bishop named Valentinus, who got martyred for conducting clandestine marriages.

Roman orgies are gone forever, but love is eternal. Taken by our yearning of simpler times, and the hope of being invited to one of those parties someday, we will let ourselves go to our hearts and bring some passion to our little pocket devices.

Valentine's Card

This program, freely available on St. Valentine's Day by courtesy of palmOne, allows creating loving e-cards including a huge pink heart and the text of your choice. When done, you can e-mail them, or you can send them by infrared to your significant other's handheld, pretending not to notice. Can there be anything more romantic?

System: Palm OS
License: 6,95 €; free on Valentine's Day

Bejeweled

This is the special Valentine's Day edition of the all-time best-selling game for handhelds. As it often happens, Bejeweled is equally simple and highly addictive. The player must combine jewels of the same color in lines of three or more items. It has two playing modes: relaxed, or non-timed; and frantic, or timed. The Valentine Edition includes heart-shaped jewels and a system to send e-cards to other devices, of course with a big red heart.

System: Palm OS, Pocket PC, Windows
License: 19,95$

NFP v2.4

Just knowing that the other person is available can be the best aphrodisiac for some latex- and hormone-allergic people. The NFP (Natural Family Planning) application shows the woman's fertile days by combining data about basal temperature, cervical position and more. You can program warnings for taking the measurements, display safe and unsafe dates on a calendar, and create Excel charts. The method is highly inconvenient and not fully error-proof (98,7% - 99,7%), but the program is free, there is even a Spanish version, and best of all, it's not a sin.

System: Palm OS
License: gratuito

LQ Meter

Another jewel, freely available from palmOne's web site. LQ is an acronym for Love Quotient. With this app, you can give score points to people of the opposite sex using the same program. The original scoring categories are eyes, face, body, sense of humour and personality, but they can be customized according to your taste (or lack of it). Once you have gathered five scores, the program calculates the average and displays your quotient. It also allows saving scores by name for later review.

System: Palm OS
License: freeware

Pick-up lines

Yes, in 100 Worst Pick-up lines you get one hundred lines guaranteed to make any man go home alone at the end of the day. This piece of popular wisdom has been making the rounds of the Internet for some time now, and it is available in many languages. In our case, it's a PDB file in English, freely downloadable from Memoware. It is also available as an application: for $5,89, Cupid Shots will help you to remember the right line for each situation. For Spanish-speaking readers, there's a humble counterpart of the above document of Spanish lines, which we have compiled after digging deep in our e-mailboxes.

My Lovers v1.5

In old movies, aspiring Casanovas used to have a little black book listing the names and marks of their lovers. This application is the handheld equivalent for today's ladies' men and man-eaters: besides the usual data, it stores such trivia as the films they watched with each lover, their favourite restaurants, where did they first meet, their birthdays, the gifts they gave to them, and of course, when, where and how did they have intercourse. By the way, anyone really requiring this program for tracking his/her dates is invited to let us know how he/she does it.

System: Palm OS
License: freeware

Love Detector

Enough of stripping the petals off a daisy (loves me, does not love me...). The Love Detector provides the exact love index between two people. You just enter your own name and the name of your object of desire, and you will instantly know how much love is in the air. Calculations are based on the science of numerology, which provides the same accuracy than daisies, but with more decimal positions.

System: Palm OS
License: freeware

Slide Spherics valentine edition 1.01

A Tetris of sorts, with colored spheres and red hearts, which displays a big heart with the 'I Love You' line at the end of the game. It's $9.85, but does your loved one deserve anything less? If you transfer this by infrared to your significant other's handheld and the result is a big show of happiness, don't doubt it: that's love.

System: Pocket PC
License: $9,85

MASH

Are you doubtful among several potential partners? This is the digital version of a high-school game (Mansion, Apartment, Shack, Home) which is able to predict, not only who will you marry, but also your car's model and color, your future job, the number of children and the place where you will live. Let's face it, if you knew that by marrying Maria you will end up as a heating installer in Cameroon, living in a shack, with five children and a blue Civic, the choice would be much easier.

System: Palm OS
License: freeware

Palmasutra

If you have reached this far, congratulations. That means the flowers, the gifts or the above suggestions have helped you to make it. Given its leading position among our weird PDA programs, the illustrated Palmasutra had to be included in this list of love programs.

System: Palm OS
License: freeware