Using a stylus to write on a smartphone is not a very ergonomic experience. Even for me, someone used to jotting things down on a notepad cub-reporter-style, it just feels off.

Realizing this, an Israeli company called OTM Technologies has designed a solution called Phree. While it looks like a chunky stylus, they're billing it as a mobile input device; what it does is allow you to write on virtually any surface, rather than the screen itself, and the penstrokes are beamed back to your device to appear on the screen.

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It has another neat trick, albeit one that looks rather odd. There are times when you're talking on your phone and need to look something up to communicate to the other party, and it's awkward to take the phone away from your ear, tap through your calendar or contacts or whatever, and move the phone back and forth while you try reading some piece of data into the phone. For this situation, the Phree takes over bluetooth headset duty.

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Here's what it looks like in action:

It's already gone through the crowdfunding roof, netting nearly $300,000 at press time, tripling its $100,000 target. Most of the Early Bird specials are gone, but there are a few left at a US $168 buy-in.

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The device has not yet been perfected, by the way; testing will begin in November of this year, and the manufacturing is slated to begin in February of next year. If all goes right, the Phree will begin shipping in March of 2016.