LORI CHEEK was walking through the meatpacking district of Manhattan when she spotted a handsome man sitting with friends amid the dinner crowd outside Pastis.

As she neared his table, she flashed a diminutive black card.

“I nestled it in his French fries,” she said, “and kept going.”

As Ms. Cheek, 37, disappeared into the July night, the man plucked the card from his fries. It read: “Look up. You might miss something.” Below, in smaller letters, were the words “find me,” a code and the address of a new Web site for singles.

Move over, Match.com. This is the next generation of online dating. Unlike traditional dating sites where members spend hours on computers writing autobiographies and scrutinizing photographs, a raft of newfangled dating tools are striving to better bridge the gap between online and real-world romance.