Each sexual encounter entered is infinitely taggable, permanently linked to one partner. (Alpha users have already requested multiple-partner support.) In aggregate, you can see when, with whom, and for how long you're typically having sex. The reward for postcoital data entry? A few perversely innocuous charts and graphs.

Even if the early adopters are loving Bedpost for its privacy features, what's missing for potentially heavy users is the ability to open up their data and share. Having sex may still be a private experience for some people — bless their hearts — but the act of finding more sex to have is so inherently social it's amazing there isn't a Facebook app for it. What happens when one can search for others on the Bedpost network who like it against the kitchen counter on a Tuesday afternoon with most of their clothes still on? Or receive SMS alerts when a past partner is updating his profile? The newspapers ought to fund this just to take down Craigslist once and for all.

Rather than rely on romantic intuition (which Messina all but admits horribly failed him in his last relationship with fellow conference-speaking professional Tara Hunt), the two are now trying to suss out behavioral patterns that might indicate a cooling of interest. How do they do it? With websites that just happen to be eager for publicity.

In tracking everything they do in sites like BaseCamp, BrightKite and Bedpost, the new couple cultivates an early-adopter mystique. Bedpost even allows them to quantitatively analyze the frequency, duration and quality of their naughty bits-mingling. How romantic!

The heart wants what it wants. And in Messina's case? Despite the news hook here being privacy, what his heart really wants is publicity.

(Photos by Jyri Engestrom and César Astudillo)