Tinder screenshots

Twenty-seven-year-old Justin Mateen knows a whole lot about your dating life. He knows how old you are, how many Facebook friends you have and what physical characteristics you're most attracted to in a potential mate -- that is, if you're a member of the nationwide, L.A.-made dating app, Tinder, which uses GPS to locate potential matches nearby.

The iPhone app's addictive, game-like premise is that users anonymously reject others almost solely based on their profile pictures. They can also initiate conversation with only those they're actually interested in, under the condition that the interest is mutual. There are no personal statements, compatibility quizzes or rating systems.

Since launching Tinder in September 2012 with CEO and fellow USC alum Sean Rad, Mateen says the app has made more than 40 million matches -- or, two people who mutually click the "heart" button on each other's profiles -- plus eight marriage proposals and counting. Not bad for a free app that was locally developed less than a year ago.

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Kevin Scanlon

Davy Rothbart

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

Davy Rothbart sits at a picnic table in Elysian Park with a Discman in his pocket. Someone actually stopped him on the street recently while he was traveling on a book tour and said, "That must be the last Discman in New York!" Rothbart shrugs telling this story. Gadgets and tech aren't really his thing. "I guess I'm just a lo-fi person," he says.

Rothbart, 38, is many other things — a writer, documentary filmmaker, This American Life contributor and creator of Found magazine, a print publication that pieces together stray letters, lists, drawings and photos.

Most people would have migrated Found over to a Tumblr by now. Not Rothbart. He's a literary slow cooker in a world of microwave media.

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Illustration by Noah Patrick Pfarr

Parked at the Grove's Farmers Market is a Volkswagen Jetta that costs more than a Lamborghini -- $250,000, to be exact. The Volkswagen is one of only two such cars in Los Angeles at the moment, and one of only 50 in the world. It looks fairly normal except for the pile of high-tech equipment mounted on its roof like a futuristic Eiffel Tower.

Owned by the mapping company Navteq, which is owned by Nokia, the car is called a True Car. Navteq is a pioneer in digital mapping, and its True Car represents the next generation of map building. It drives around the city collecting a terabyte of information every day.

Its driver is Ron Jimenez, Navteq team lead, whose business card describes his work address in latitude and longitude -- 34 degrees 11'9" N, 118 degrees 30'4" W, aka Encino.

On a drizzly weekday, Jimenez and the company's polished director of product development, Sara Rossio, stand in the parking lot with the car, which is on a brief break from cruising every street in town.

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Ryan Brackin

Adam Nix (director-editor-cinematographer), left, Ben Roy (co-creator) and Evan Nix (director-editor) with Denver students from the public school where they shot the pilot for their series Those Who Can't

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*More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage
*Our Special Issue: How to Succeed on YouTube
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013

Amazon's new production arm, Amazon Studios, is right now breaking new ground by premiering 14 scripted pilots and having the public help decide who will get series orders. But its avant-garde development process goes deeper than that.

Amazon's original programming execs, Sarah Babineau and Joe Lewis, bought some finished scripts that had made the rounds at other networks in previous years but gone unpurchased. Others they bought from unknowns who submitted their full scripts through Amazon's call for submissions on its website. From first-time TV writers to Academy Award-nominated veterans, Amazon gave many of its creators unprecedented freedom in casting, crew, content and production.

This freedom, and perhaps the pure publicity stunt of it all, allowed Amazon to woo established creators who might not otherwise have been interested in having their work displayed at a meat market for any guy in sweatpants in his grandma's basement to vilify or exult. "At first I thought, who wants to work on troll bait?" says famed Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of Amazon pilot Alpha House. "But Amazon is assessing reaction through a variety of different metrics, so whatever decisions they make will almost certainly be more informed and rational than the traditional Hollywood gut calls."

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You could let your conscience be your guide, but that doesn't sound like very much fun at all. Plus LA Weekly's new and improved Smartphone app is going to do a much better job, especially since it's just been technologically bedazzled and is now ready for your downloading and upgrading pleasure.

Wherever you are and whatever you're into, you'll find something within the app that you can use right now. With just a few thumb swipes, you can:

• See up-to-the-minute content from all our blogs (which include news, arts, music and food)
• Instantly find restaurants and bars near you, searchable by cuisine type and neighborhood
• Check out event listings and concert calendars searchable by date, artist, neighborhood, venue or genre
• See editors' picks of the best things to do, and reviews from our writers
• Peep slideshows of local nightlife, concerts and events
• Get access to our money-saving Daily Deals.

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Bill Raden

Alex Lyras -- he packs what he preaches

See also:
*Our Latest Theater Reviews

It did not take Alex Lyras long to realize that there was something uniquely different about performing Mike Daisey's solo play The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

Sitting in the Farmers Market on a recent afternoon after getting the bum's rush by a Grove security guard over an impromptu but unauthorized photo shoot by this L.A. Weekly reporter in front of the mall's Apple Store, Lyras recounts the first time he did the controversial monologue as a warm-up for a show scheduled for his alma mater. Unlike performances of his own work, where "when you walk out afterwards [and] people are lit up," the veteran actor-writer and monologist remembers, there was little ecstasy in evidence following the Daisey piece.

"We had a hundred people at the Lillian Theatre," Lyras recalls, "and I walked out ready to see my friends. And they're like, 'We feel like shit. Thank you for dropping that bomb on us. We have to go.' Like the joy after was not there. There was a lot of discussion, but I just remember seeing a bunch of people not make eye contact with me, and I was like, 'Oh my god, did I have a hole in my pants?' Like what happened?"

Whatever else might have happened, it became clear that performing a piece that takes on computer manufacturers -- and specifically Apple's Chinese iPad and iPhone operations -- over the harsh and sometimes dangerous working conditions of their overseas factories wasn't going to win Lyras unconditional love and adulation. At least not from an iPhone-packing L.A. audience of actors and Hollywood industry types at Theatre Asylum, where his run performing the show begins today.

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Getty's emoji art history on its Twitter feed

A somewhat conservative institution like the Getty Museum isn't alway known for its sense of humor. And Richard Meier's modernist castle on the hill can be intimidating. So it comes as a pleasant surprise to see the Getty jumping on one of the more amusing Internet memes to pop up in the last, oh, 72 hours.

According to art blog Hyperallergic, what started as a simple Tumblr post evolved into the Twitter hashtag #emojiarthistory. Using emoji, the simple picture characters that have exploded in popularity in text, instant messages and tweets, art nerds have been re-telling art history through Twitter.

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photo by Jacy Wojcik

"I want to start a dating app for people over fifty. I know a lot of hot guys over fifty," one woman pitched to a small group last night.

She was in the right place to get feedback, at the Dating and Social Networks Startup Showcase and Digital Dating Etiquette Panel, hosted by Kevin Winston, Founder and CEO of the tech networking group Digital LA. The event was held at ROC, a shared office space in Santa Monica that's home to many digital startups and entrepreneurs. The event attracted industry professionals of all ages and a solid split of genders to pitch their startup companies, as well as a panel of experts to discuss social media startup tips and online dating etiquette, just in time for everyone's favorite holiday.

Digital dating is getting a makeover. No more trolling profiles, looking at photos of people they took ten years ago during their "super hot college years." Gone are the days of reading a laundry list of interests and slugging through tedious paragraphs when you really just want to know if there is anyway you may have a coveted "connection." The startups and experts on this panel are moving online dating to a more natural place -- you may not be meeting these people in person for the first time but goddammit it is going to be as close to that as possible.

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Silent James

Tawkify is like an exclusive dating club full of accomplished friendly people.

Recently, on a blind date arranged by the matchmaking service Tawkify, I blurted out the last thing any sane man in his twenties wants to hear, gesturing to the bald ball of joy in a high chair a yard away as we approached our table:

"I'm going to sit on this side, so I can stare at that baby!"

To be clear, I am a decade away from even beginning to consider having children, and I often maintain I don't want kids at all. This announcement had less to do with my motherly urges and more to do with my foggy tendency to say exactly the wrong thing. Recently I greeted a good friend at her birthday party with a hug and an inexplicable "Nice to meet you!," flummoxing everyone within earshot.

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@urbanpirahnatwo

Alex Fraser's shot of the Santa Monica Pier on Instagram

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament
*50 Reasons Los Angeles Is the Best City in America

Just before the end of Instagram's wild year — bought by Facebook for $1 billion, publicly eviscerated by its community for new privacy policies — the photo-sharing app posted a list of the 10 most Instagrammed places in 2012.

Although top honors went to two locations in Bangkok — Suvarnabhumi Airport and Siam Paragon, a mall — the rest of the list read like a local guidebook. Southern California was home to five of the 10 locations on the list: Disneyland (third), Los Angeles International Airport (sixth), Dodger Stadium (seventh), Staples Center (ninth) and the Santa Monica Pier (10th).

In fact, the only locations not in Bangkok or Southern California were Times Square (fourth), AT&T Park in San Francisco (fifth) and the Eiffel Tower (eighth).

OK, I know what you're thinking. A Thai mall is more popular than Disneyland? And Dodger Stadium's more photogenic than the Eiffel Tower?

Well, not exactly. I joined Instagram last year and have spent the last year diligently, if not scientifically, studying the app (you all take far too many unappetizing food photos). With my iPhone in hand, and my trusty Lo-Fi filter at the ready, I set off to find out why Instagram loves L.A.

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