thrillist

You can't overestimate the importance of having a good wingman, especially when yours is so intent on shooting down Jester he ends up flying through your jet wash, and killing Anthony Edwards. Plus he, like, sucks at talking to girls. For an app that's more like Maverick at the end of the movie, Wingman.

Developed by a pair of digi-dorks based in NYC/LA, but launching first in meeting-people-sucks-harder-here Seattle, this purposefully-playful foursquare-integrated app takes the personal out of getting personal by letting you all but anonymously express your interest in someone else at the same location, all based on nothing more than a picture, which is worth like, 1000 "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven". Using the app's super-easy: once you "check-in" at a bar/coffee shop/game/wherever, you can send a "Wingman" to any nearby app user, but here's the catch; they can't see who it's from unless they send you one too -- if there's a match, VM automatically connects you via chat, though it's not really clear how a French cat is going to help the situation. To make using the app not-creepy, it limits the number of Wingmen you can send in a given location, prevents users who're more than a quarter mile away from "seeing" you, and allows you to block people simply by clicking a small flag icon, to allay fears of getting Union jacked.

As a bonus, Belltown bars Del Rey and Pintxo are offering drink specials to people who check in, and while the apps' currently iPhone only, they're also developing an Android version, which may stay out of your jet wash but, due to its computer brain, has already lost that loving feeling.

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Don't just wing it next time you see a pretty girl, um...justwing.it instead