Alice Lee | Spring Fling — There's an app for that

Fling is fun, though when it comes to logistics, it can be annoyingly complicated. You’ve got to figure out where to go, when and with whom. If you’re hosting get-togethers, you’ve got to coordinate things like food, drinks and music — the list goes on.

But hey, this is 2012. If you’ve got a problem — there’s (probably) an app for that. (Unless that problem is not being able to get Tiësto floor passes despite having camped out on College Green all night. As your tech columnist, I can’t really help you out there.) So here are some apps you should check out this weekend:

1. Text with GroupMe
Let’s say you have 10 friends you want to send a mass text to (“Meet us at the petting zoo in 15!”). Normally, you’d have to manually enter each of their names and then you’d be charged for sending 10 texts. GroupMe sets up one central number for a designated group of friends. From then on, you only need to text that one number, which auto-forwards your text to each group member’s phone and incurs the charge of just one text.

2. Navigate with Foursquare and Google Maps
Being lost is never any fun. If you’re going somewhere unfamiliar, use Foursquare first to find the exact street addresses of frat houses, clubs or pop-up venues that definitely aren’t listed in Google Maps. Then use Maps to navigate to those locations.

3. DJ with Turntable
This one is easy — some music services like Grooveshark or Spotify let you queue up songs but Turntable has a group DJ feature that lets any user add songs to the music line-up from any device: mobile, iPad or computer. This is great for casual kickbacks where there isn’t one designated DJ, but tons of people to contribute.

4. Bartend with Mixology
You’ve got some random ingredients left in your fridge and a bunch of thirsty friends over. Just enter in the ingredients that you happen to have on hand and Mixology whips up all the possible drink recipes for you from its thousand-recipe database. Magic.

5. Listen with SoundHound
You’re at a party and a song comes on that you fall in love with, but aren’t familiar with. Let SoundHound listen to four seconds of the song as it’s being played and instantly have it identified and stored on your phone. It’s like a faster, more accurate version of Shazam that you can then sync with iTunes.

6. Have serendipitous encounters with Highlight
Fling is a time of serendipitous encounters. Highlight shows you all the people nearby you who you may know and are also running the app. I should caveat that this is more of an app for people who are comfortable with openly sharing their location, but could result in a chance encounter with someone interesting — that friend of yours from freshman year you lost touch with or that girl you’ve always wanted to meet.

7. Find noms with pennfoodtrucks.com
Assuming you’ll be moving around more than usual this weekend and in the mood for cheap food, use Penn Food Trucks to find that mid-afternoon snack or late-night grub. Penn Food Trucks was founded by a group of students including 2011 Wharton graduate Mike Yuan and features maps, menu items and contact information of food trucks all around Penn.

8. Split checks with Venmo
Figuring out the group check at the end of a BYO is always a headache-inducing mess of calculations and spare change. Venmo lets you sync your credit card to its service and pay your friends back either online or from your phone (with no transaction fees for the first $500 transferred). Engineering senior and former Daily Pennsylvanian columnist Alexey Komissarouk covered this last fall, but I think it’s worth a repeat mention — Venmo was started by Penn students as well!

And of course, no Spring Fling would be complete without live-broadcasting your status updates across your usual staples: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You know the drill.

Finally, your safety comes first. If there’s ever an emergency or accident, it should be fairly obvious that you should get off these apps, stop texting and call Penn Police (215-573-3333 or 511 from any campus phone) right away.

Happy flinging!

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