It's harder than ever to find true love in the big city these days, what with divorce statistics staring you in the face like a warning sign and reality TV creating falsely inflated expectations for romance. (Living in L.A., land of plenty of other falsely inflated, let's say egos, can't help.) Oftentimes, it just seems like you just can't find someone on your level. You're not picky, just selective, about who you take to that show at the Echo, or share your Intelligentsia latte with.

Fortunately, several like-minded single scenesters have taken it upon themselves to help you find that special boy or girl who has the exact same unique tastes as you do. So forget combing through the teeming masses of OkCupid or Match.com, stop waiting for that coffee shop cutie to ask you about that book you're reading and head to one of these new dating sites.

Alikewise

Trying to score a date by asking that cute girl about the book she's reading is one of the oldest tricks in the, well, book, but until now romantically inclined bookworms either had to leave these encounters to chance (or stake out Barnes & Noble's literary fiction section). Now, thanks to Alikewise founder Matt Sherman's own search for a woman who had read “The Black Swan” after a breakup, you can hunt down fellow David Foster Wallace fans without having to leave your house. The site costs as much as a good library book (nothing) and lets you search by person or book. The beauty of Alikewise, which in only seven months of existence has grown to more than 10,000 users, is that books are often a proxy for other interests. As Sherman said, “Books are a great way of revealing what you're passionate about. It might be cooking, it might be great literature, it might be yoga.”

Cupidtino

As vicious as the war between the sexes can get, true iFanboys know it's nothing compared to Apple vs. Microsoft. Just ask Cupidtino Chief Executive Mel Sampat, who created the site after his PC-using girlfriend wouldn't let him bring his iPad to the dinner table. When he threatened to leave her for a Mac fan, he realized there were probably plenty of Steve Jobs-adoring singles just waiting to be connected. Well, Sampat is still with that girlfriend, but now he's running a successful dating site, with 28,000 users waiting to find their iMatch. If you're a creative type who loves Apple and is looking for a date with someone who shares your appreciation of clean user interfaces, here you go. This is more than putting “my iPhone” in your interests section on another site — you can only sign up on a Mac, and in true Mac minimalist fashion, there are no quizzes or long questionnaires. Of course, like Apple products, Cupidtino has its price. Sign up and contact other users for free, but to read messages received you'll need a monthly subscription, which is pegged to the price of a Starbucks Venti Latte (currently $4.79). However, since Los Angeles has the most Cupidtino users (film editors, graphic designers and hipsters galore) of any city, there's a good chance that cash will find someone to watch a movie on your iPad with.

Tastebuds.fm

Although picking a significant other based on their iTunes library or record collection may seem shallow, doing so can help you avoid a thousand arguments. Arguments about what to listen to in the car, about what to do on a Friday night and about how big of a nerd you are can all be avoided if you choose someone who shares your love of mid-'90s post-punk from the beginning. At least that's what Alex Parish and Julian Keenaghan, the London-based founders of Tastebuds.fm (and members of the band Years of Rice and Salt) are hoping. Launched in June, Tastebuds now boasts 12,000 members. Parish said Tastebuds isn't necessarily the place to find your soulmate, but a way to find members of the opposite sex who share your interests and might want to go to some shows with you. If you've ever been a big death-metal or minimal-techno fan, you probably appreciate that this was a desperately needed service. Although Tastebuds is still most popular in its native U.K., there's no cover to sign up, so you might as well give it a try. It's certainly easier than trying to yell loud enough to hit on someone during a sold-out show.

-- Daniel Siegal

Photo: Matt Sherman of Alikewise. Credit: Ualani Teale

Flavors.me from Jack Zerby on Vimeo.

If you're the kind of person who has more Internet profiles than pairs of underwear, Flavors.me is for you. The year-old site (which your grandpa blogger just discovered) allows you to pull your various feeds -- Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Flickr, Netflix, the list goes on -- into one easy, elegant homepage, so your significant other can stop asking why you need two different Tumblr blogs and a Twitter handle. (Because you're a nerd. It's O.K.!) Then again, if you need a homepage for your other homepages, it might be time to go take a walk. Without your step-counting iPhone app.

-- David Greenwald

When I first got my iPhone, I was thrilled to discover Convertbot, which made it fun and easy to convert ingredient quantities or temperatures from my British cookbooks. That app, it turned out, was just a taste of the onslaught of food and wine apps to come — so many, you'd have to be a full-time app tester to try them all out. (Unfortunately, I have another job.)

But I do try a lot. Here are apps for the iPhone that I've found most useful. Several are also available on the Android platform.

OpenTable (OpenTable Inc.), free: Make restaurant reservations from anywhere with this easy-to-use app. Easy as pie to get a confirmed res. And just as easy to cancel as to make one, so no more excuses for being a no-show. For iPhone and Android.

How to Cook Everything (Culinate Inc.), $4.99: Though a free How to Cook Everything Essentials app exists (with 107 recipes), spring for the paid app based on New York Times' columnist Mark Bittman's bestselling book. It's like having that giant tome in your pocket — all 2,000 recipes — to consult on a whim or in an emergency. At the market and stumped for what to cook? Look it up, find a recipe and, with one click, unload the ingredients into a shopping list. Great design, easy to read and use. For iPhone.

Ratio (Ruhlman Enterprises Inc.), $4.99: This one is based on Michael Ruhlman's book “Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.” Keep this baby close and you can wing it almost anywhere, recipe-free. On vacation and yearning to make biscuits or brine a pork loin? Whip out this app and you can calculate proportions of ingredients needed. Most useful: Ruhlman's suggested variations on a theme and the ability to save your notes on what worked — or didn't. For iPhone and Android.

EPI (CondéNet), free: Epicurious Recipes lets you search 25,000 recipes from the archives of Bon Appétit and the late Gourmet. The range of recipes is broad, and if you're stuck for a recipe for Jerusalem artichokes or kohlrabi, you'll surely find something here. Search by main ingredient, course, cuisine or season. A wonderful resource when you don't have your library of cookbooks nearby. For iPhone and Android.

Convertbot (Tapbots), $0.99: Clever app that converts weight, volume, temperature and much more from one measurement to another. Fast and elegant. For iPhone.

KitchenPad Timer (Prativo Group Inc.), $1.99: Not so swift at multitasking in the kitchen? Here's an app that manages multiple timers for your stovetop and oven, four each. So as not to confuse the cook, each can be tagged with what's cooking and at what temperature. And you can see which stage everything — stock, ragù, apricot jam, duck — is at all on one display. It gives at least the illusion of control, which may serve to soothe culinary anxiety. For iPhone.

Pocket Cocktails (Pocket Cocktails Inc.), $0.99: Here's your faithful cocktail primer with photos and recipes for hundreds of drinks. Best section is the classics, with recipes for drinks such as the Greyhound, Moscow Mule, Sazerac, plus a separate martini section (available as a free app as Top Martini Recipes). Complete with tips on chilling glasses, muddling, creating garnishes. Cute: Shake your phone to choose a random drink recipe. For iPhone, with an HD version for iPad.

Vintage Chart+ by Wine Spectator (Wine Spectator Custom), free: For those who encounter a situation frequently (as in high-end wine lists) in which they need to check or compare wine vintages, this is the app for you. Wine Spectator gets it right with this elegantly designed application. Search by country or region, or both, but more fun, by zooming in on a topographic world map — Anderson Valley, Douro, South Africa. As for accuracy, vintage info is based on hundreds, if not thousands, of tastings by the wine magazine's staff over a number of years, distilled into a sentence or two. For iPhone.

Craft Beer App (Xtreme Labs), $0.99: Explore American craft beers with this crafty app. I immediately looked up Allagash Tripel Reserve and found detailed info and tasting notes, including the recommended serving temp (40 to 50 degrees). A beer expert might quibble with the choices and notes, but for budding beer lovers, this could be useful, if only to impress your friends with your newfound expertise. And it costs less than a few sips of beer. For iPhone.

-- S. Irene Virbila

Photo: When stumped in the kitchen, from making measurement conversions to finding a recipe, apps for the iPhone, and some for Android, are just a couple taps away. Credit: Richard Derk for the Times

Despite the Internet's multiple references today, Magritte might be pushing it -- we're not sure what this has to do with the apple-loving Belgian surrealist, but then again, we did drop out of that art history class. Either way, above, you'll find a fun, DIY guide to impressing your Facebook graphic designer friends and that cute barista who hasn't poked you back yet.

-- David Greenwald

In Hollywood, iPhones are almost as ubiquitous as Starbucks cups and production assistants -- so why not put them to work? Chemical Wedding, an L.A.-based three-man start-up, is doing just that. The company has designed iPhone and iPad apps that’ve made their way onto the sets of “30 Rock” and “Iron Man 2,” among others:  Helios (a sun position calculator), Artemis (a high-tech viewfinder) and its latest, Toland, a collaboration with the American Society of Cinematographers. We sat down with Chemical Wedding’s Toby Evetts, Simon Reeves and Nic Sadler to discuss jumping into app-making, the difference between producers and directors and their relationship with Apple.

-- David Greenwald

BX: You all had backgrounds in different fields – filmmaking, investment banking, advertising, etc. -- before jumping into this. How did Chemical Wedding get started?

Nic Sadler: I talked to Toby and Simon about an application I’d been using for a long time in the film industry called sunPATH, which is software that allows you to track the position of the sun. When you’re on location shooting, you’ll often go to the location in March, but you have to know what the sun’s going to be doing in September because that’s when you’ll be back. So I said to Toby and Simon, we could make an application that could do this which could be a hell of a lot more convenient.

Continue reading after the jump >>

This episode of Brand X is brought to you by the word "Depressed." "Sesame Street," that Katy Perry-featuring, controversy-baiting muppet morning show is at it again, featuring a song devoted to the "iPogo" (you missed a few letters there, guys) and its miraculous technological possibilities. "If you want to call your cat, there's an app for that," one muppet sings in the above video. What do you think, Brand Xers? Harmless fun for an iPhone world? Or is "Sesame Street" indoctrinating our nation's youth into the cult of Apple consumption a bad thing?

-- David Greenwald

As the buzz surrounding Google's efforts to jump into the digital music market rose to a roar in late August, one name kept surfacing about the person who might lead it — Ian Rogers.

Rogers, who once headed up Yahoo Inc.'s $140-million music business, has been at the forefront of digital music and came out ahead when others perished.

But the 38-year-old avid skateboarder believes he'll have more influence as chief executive of Topspin, a small start-up in Santa Monica that helps bands market and sell their music online — no label needed.

“What he's creating is the missing link between artists and their fans,” said Jeff Price, chief executive of Tunecore, an online music distribution company. “There are other companies out there doing what Topspin does, but most of them are not getting as much traction. He has a track record of having a vision and executing on it unwaveringly.”

Continue reading after the jump >>

Tristan Couvares is putting his life in your hands. The 25-year-old Angeleno is the star of ControlTV.com, a new web reality series that allows viewers to make his decisions from dinner to dating. Starting today and running for the next six weeks, a camera crew will spend every waking moment with Couvares in a sort of real-life take on Jim Carrey's "The Truman Show" -- or a "Choose Your Own Adventure" version of "The Hills."

Though show producers, including "Robot Chicken's" Seth Green, may have big plans for the show, they haven't let Couvares in on them.

"They haven't told me a whole lot -- I don't think they want the experience to feel staged. They want it to feel very organic," he said. "People are going to know right away that this is real."

That includes leaving his schedule open to possibilities -- and viewer fickleness.

"I may try a couple of jobs out," he said. "We're not going to do anything immoral or unethical or illegal... [but] I don't have veto power."

The independent production is relying on corporate sponsorship and product placement from Ford and Sprint for its funding, with Couvares receiving his latest instructions on a HTC Evo 4G phone. 

Though an 18-hour-a-day show can't be constantly exciting (one opening-day sequence found Couvares and a friend engaged in the world's longest fantasy football conversation), as of Wednesday, the site notched enough traffic to partially shut down, though Couvares says he's not looking for Hollywood fame.

"I've never acted, never really been into the entertainment thing," he said, adding he'd previously worked in finance and IT. "I'm open to any opportunity that comes out of this -- both while we're filming and afterwards." 

Asked what his biggest fear for the six weeks would be, Couvares smartly clammed up.

"I wouldn't want to tell you, being that you're a reporter and you'd publish it, and then I would certainly have to do it on the show," he said with a laugh.

However, though most reality shows arrive tightly edited, the real-time nature of "ControlTV" means Couvares' more private moments -- even bathroom breaks -- could be on display. 

"They're welcome to come as far as they want," he said. 

-- David Greenwald

Photo: "ControlTV" star Tristan Couvares. Credit: Tao Ruspoli 

While TruxMap doesn't seem to have a full roster of Los Angeles' dozens of food trucks yet, for those just trying to track down a meal, the site is a godsend: Click to see relatively real-time Google Map positioning for trucks including Cool Haus, Nom Nom and more. (The site's also available for other cities such as San Diego and San Francisco.)

Update: It appears we are late to this party! Also, the map only lists active trucks (based on their Twitter updates), which is why it's not constantly cluttered with hundreds of green push pins.

-- David Greenwald

Photo: TruxMap's food track locator in action. Credit: TruxMap.

"Gone are the days that you can just walk into a boardroom, say Twitter, and expect someone to pay you $20,000 and land yourself on the cover of Wired magazine. Now, you have to say 'Foursquare,'" Alex Blagg advises in the above video for his new site, ABajillionHits.biz. Blagg, an L.A. resident and longtime pop culture blogger whose resume includes VH1's BestWeekEver.tv and MSN's Wonderwall, knows what he's skewering, though we can't help but wonder if his circa-2002 hipster outfit is intentionally dated. The video's accompanying website, hosted on the teenager-and-rock-critic-critic-friendly Tumblr platform, offers satiric tips on how to score more Twitter followers and what to do when Facebook's down.

The blogger seems to be fully embracing his new persona with the verve of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat or Stephen Colbert's, er, Stephen Colbert, not breaking character through a Fast Company interview and saying things that don't sound completely ridiculous: "We have to re-evaulate the paradigm of what defines success. Historically, we've always looked at profits and revenues, but what I'm proposing is that we shift the paradigm to look at engagement metrics: Twitter followers, retweets, Tumblr mentions. Those things can often provide more long-term value than something as simple as ROI," he told the magazine. The rub, of course, is "someone... tried to approach Blagg" for real-life "social media consulting," the Village Voice reports, which means the blogger may be trying to have his cake and tweet it, too. Is this the Internet we want to digitally live in, Brand Xers? By the way, you can follow us on Twitter at @IAmBrandX.

-- David Greenwald