We’re seeing lots happening with the return of the stylus, ever since the Samsung Galaxy Note made it’s appearance. iPad apps galore encourage the use of styluses, and even paintbrushes galore. The above is Cipher, a credit card sized stylus is from Quirky Labs meant to be easy to grip and transport.

Our only question is…can we just use a credit card?

(Source: likecool.com)

Here come the tech-savvy brides! The wave of Gen Ys getting married in the last few years have made the traditional (and stressful) party planning process take a huge step into the digital age. Inspiration boards on Pinterest and Stylemepretty have become go-tos for young brides, and wedding invitation designs now come with corresponding wedding website templates. Enter Appy Couple, the next step in the modernization of wedding planning. The service creates customized apps for couples who want all their wedding info at their guests’ fingertips. Timelines, maps, weather reports, photo galleries and more are all integrated into a simple app the couple design themselves. And, of course, it comes with a free coordinating wedding website. Though still in beta, invitation-only Appy Couple has a wait list of over 7,000 couples.

What was first an aspiring entrepreneur trying to make some extra cash is now the Airbnb for dogs. Of all of the presentations at this week’s LA Demo Day in Santa Monica, one of my favorites had to be the DogVacay pitch. The DogVacay platform connects dog owner with dog sitters, providing a variety of staycations for the pups. From town-homes in West LA to ranches in Malibu, DogVacay provides accommodations at all levels! 

In preparation for the end of the world/zombie takeover that has been trending in games and entertainment, we’re happy to have the BILLETS 9MM Earphones in our apocalypse kit. Not only do they come in a tactical carrying case, they are made from aircraft-grade aluminum and wire reinforced by Kevlar. And the sound quality should help drown out that anticipated zombie drone. 

Filed Under: Drag and Drop of the Future

Instead of fiddling with cables, glitchy apps, or little memory cards to move files between devices, what if we could just drag and drop through the air? Wireless data transfer is practically taken for granted now; we’re just waiting for the perfect interface to move data between devices—and this video shows a concept that is just that. With “spatially aware devices,” looks like it could be a smooth transition into the future of seamless data transfer. 

Project Good Cry gives us the crying-while-watching-a-really-inspiring-youtube-video validation we’ve all been waiting for, with their new “I Cried” button. All you have to do is install the button, and Project Good Cry will keep track of who is crying after what, so that no one is crying alone. So for example, if you have Google Chrome, you can install the button, watch your favorite weepy youtube video such as Dumbo’s Baby of Mine video, and admit to the world you cried, alongside 653 viewers that also cried. 

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Filed Under: Paintbrush for iPad

Despite the multitude of sophisticated drawing apps for the iPad, we’re still attempting to create digital masterpieces with the dexterity of a kindergartner finger-painting. No more scribble scrabble for me, though—I’ll be snapping up a Sensu Brush, a brilliant tool that combines a rubber-tipped digital stylus with a paintbrush in a sleek silver package. Painting perfection sans mess. 

Yes, we loooove our iPads, but even those Apple-fanatics among us can sometimes feel inept and clumsy trying to type on that oh-so-sleek screen. Keyboard cases are a popular fix for those iPad users, but we’re ready to toss ours out to test drive the Celluon Magic Cube, a portable device that projects a keyboard onto your workspace wherever you go. Using an optical sensor and infrared technology, Magic Cube lets you actually type on any flat surface and makes you feel like George Jetson at the same time! The little box connects wirelessly to your iPhone or iPad, the battery lasts 160 minutes, and the projected keyboard even simulates clicking sounds.

The steller design team at the Artefact Group just released a Kickstarter project that looks to gamify conserving. The 999Bottle is a reusable water that lets you keep track of every time you fill it up/avoid another plastic bottle that would most likely make its way to a landfill, and a iPhone app that brings to life what your conservation has led to. At 14, the bottle just paid for itself and at 138 you would have been able to stack those plastic bottles as high as a 10-story building.

Filed Under: On The Dot—360° Panoramic Video From Your iPhone

There are plenty of fun little iPhone camera add-ons that give a fish-eye look or a color filter, but the Kogeto Dot is far from a petty extra. The Kogeto Dot Panoramic iPhone Lens is a game-changer for those who love to capture and share the world around them. The easy snap-on lens enables users to take full 360° photos and video using just an iPhone. With the dedicated app, simply hold an iPhone face-down, let the iConic lens capture your awesome surroundings, then upload for viewing on Kogeto’s website or the Looker app. Users can swipe the screen to “spin” around and experience that concert/mountain peak/road-trip all over again. You’ve got to see it to believe it; check out this Coachella video to (re)live the madness, or experience this snowboarding run from all angles. 

Google Drive went live today, and for those of you who were thinking, “what next?” from the ever-growing search company. This is Google’s move into the cloud storage business to compete with Dropbox and SkyDrive but doesn’t have the two companies all that worried. Basically Google Drive is a more advanced Google Docs where you can open over 30 kinds of files in the browser without having to download it, including PhotoShop and HD videos. Drive works great if you’re an avid Google Apps user, but if the point of cloud technology is ease, I don’t see many consumers picking up everything in their Dropbox and making the move. However, for new users Drive offers 5GB for free verus Dropbox’s 2GB, pulling in all the cloud newbies. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Game of Thrones, but feels like war is coming.

There’s a… Nap for that? The science of sleep is now available in the Apple App Store in the form of Dream:ON, an app that claims to be able to shape users’ dream by playing a soundscape to evoke the sensation of being in a certain environment. With themes like “Space Shuttle,” “Wild West,” and, “A Trip to Tokyo” these dreams are sure to be adventures. Dream:ON was developed by British psychologist and professor Richard Wiseman, who made the app to conduct a mass experiment by prompting users to submit their dreams, which will subsequently be analyzed by researchers. Using an app as a widespread participation study is innovative, and with a free app and the potential to manipulate your dreams, why not Dream:ON?