I don't quite know why, but the best place I found to make friends is Flickr, I think that something about the place being more about photos and less about making friends made it easier to make friends (sort of like making friends at the gym or at a museum or a cooking class as opposed to making friends at one of those "single and looking bars".
My advice is, get a camera (if you don't already have one) get a flickr account (if you don't already have one) and join a few groups that are about the area you live in. A lot of those groups have a photo stroll every now and then, which is a nice way to meet people face to face.
The NY social group is a good example:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/nycsocials/
Also, the Tel Aviv stories group:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/tel-aviv/
The best thing to do is look at pictures and make a lot of comments till a conversation struck. I think that's how I made most of my current friends.