When likealittle.com was popular for a week, I was all about it. To me, it was a revolution in how college students could harmlessly flirt with one another. But when I lost interest over Winter Break, I became concerned for the future of anonymous romantic chatting. What would fill the void of questions like “r u hawt??!”

Enter Date Radar, a free app for the iPhone that allows you to chat with people (and here’s the best part) in your vicinity. If this sounds like the beginning of a tragic Lifetime movie, I was on the same page for a while. Fortunately, there are some restrictions that make this whole process less attractive to “creepy stalker perverts”:

* You have to turn on the app to use it.

* It only detects other nearby users who also have the app activated.

* There is a “block” feature for people to abuse mercilessly.

* Users must be over 17 years old to use the app.

Somehow, the last bit of information is the most comforting to me. It’s nice to know that I’m not likely to confuse some poor 8-year-old using a smart phone with a hopeful bachelorette. I could suddenly be the subject of an entirely different tragic Lifetime movie.

What this app means for people looking to hook up is that they aren’t searching for singles that could be anywhere. Date Radar continuously searches in the general area for other users to chat with, which means no messing around, messaging some cute guy who happens to live in Wisconsin. Love may know no bounds, but unfortunately neither do today’s gas prices.

Gifts are also a big part of Date Radar because nothing says “I want to stick my tongue down your throat” quite like a virtual balloon.

One of the biggest features of Date Radar is also one of my biggest beefs with it. Because of the blind dating app format of this whole experience, Date Radar does not include profiles or photos of its users. Maybe I have just been conditioned by participating in the “Facebook generation” in which a person isn’t really a person if they don’t have an up-to-date profile flaunting their tastes in music, movies and a section reading “books? wut r books.” We all need profiles for a realistic first impression these days. And without knowing what your potential chat-buddy looks like due to a lack of a photo, you are essentially saying, “Hey, I’m here, and I’m horny.”

For anyone with an iPhone who is also single and alone, this app is entirely free. Can Angry Birds say that? No, and Angry Birds also can’t promise that you go home with a total stranger.

Assuming that I own an iPhone one day, I’m likely to pick up this up. My only hope is that I get one soon. I’d hate to wait much more than a week and miss out on the fad.

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