Bytes: What’s new in tech

An app to rate your date

There’s a new, “female-friendly” dating app on the scene, said Deborah Schoeneman in The New York Times. The program, called Lulu, is like a Yelp for women who want to know as much about who they’re going to a restaurant with as they do about what restaurant they’re going to. It allows them to “anonymously review men who are their Facebook friends,” and read similar reviews from women they don’t know. Users “can rate men in categories—ex-boyfriend, crush, together, hooked-up, friend, or relative—with a multiple-choice quiz” and add hashtags that are used to calculate a score and rate the men. “Dating without a reference is the scariest thing you can do,” said Erin Foster, a 31-year-old Lulu user. “Meeting someone out in the world when you’re not in school or don’t work with each other or have mutual friends—you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

Dropbox meets AirDrop

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Cloud storage on your iPhone just got simpler, said Eric Blattberg in VentureBeat.com. Dropbox last week released new versions of its iOS apps, sporting “a whiter, more minimalistic user interface that brings the app in line with other iOS 7 offerings.” But the real draw is less the look than Dropbox’s new features, which include a split-screen view for the iPad. And for users who need to share their files with others, the new version lets them send links and files to nearby iOS 7 devices through Apple’s Bluetooth- and WiFi-powered AirDrop technology.

Airfare of the future

Put away your frequent-flier miles, said Pranav Dixit in FastCompany.com. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson says Virgin Galactic, his space tourism company that hopes to one day send passengers into suborbital spaceflights, will soon let customers buy tickets using Bitcoins. “Virgin Galactic is a company looking into the future; so is Bitcoin,” Branson said. The virtual currency, which now costs about $750 per Bitcoin, seems like a good fit for the emerging space tourism industry: A flight on a Virgin Galactic shuttle, which reportedly costs about $250,000, is supposed to be available some time next year. Bitcoin, too, “is slowly becoming more mainstream.” CheapAir.com also accepts Bitcoins as payment for flight tickets, and a university in Cyprus lets its students pay tuition in the online currency.