360 DEGREES Weblog

I know those little yellow sponges you cram in your ears aren’t the most advanced way to protect your hearing, but these Sonic Defenders make them look like they date back to the age of cavemen. When worn the SureFire EP-3 ear plugs let you hear safe and routine sounds like normal conversation, but potentially harmful sounds above 80dB are safely reduced via the company’s special design that incorporates the patented ‘Hocks Noise Braker’ filter. They also feature a small removable stopper that will block out nearly all sounds when you want some real peace and quiet, and they’re available for a mere $12.95 directly from SureFire.

Have a passion for music, food, wine, recipes, wellness, or film? The new line of Moleskine Passions Journals ($14) are for you. These specific-purpose notebooks — individually tailored for each of the subjects above — offer pages divided by printed tabs, each with a themed layout, pages divided by blank tabs for you to personalize with the included adhesive labels, blank pages, themed charts, calendars, glossaries, and listings, along with a unique black cover, fully embossed with themed images and writings.

$14 at Amazon

Are you fussy about the quality of air that you breathe? If you’re always worried about airborne germs and viruses, it’s probably worth checking out the Germ Guardian EV-9-102 UV-C Air Sanitizer. Claiming to be the first product to effectively utilize Ultraviolet-C light to kill 99.9% of viruses, bacteria and mold spores. A quiet, yet powerful fan is in place to draw in the air into the unit, where the Ultraviolet-C light can work its magic. If you’ve got your heart set on it, you’ll need to shell out $150 for this device.

Fastmac, who know how to make iPhone backup chargers, just made a more form-fitting version that also has an IR port. That means your iPhone is now a universal remote.

With their included app, the iPhone 3G and 3GS can control basically any IR-sensitive device you have as long as it’s docked into the case. The case itself has a 1300 mAh battery, a built-in flash, a USB port for charging another device, and an on-off toggle. The price is $100, which is slightly higher than normal cases, but normal cases can’t turn your TV on and off. It also has neat functions like being aware of your local channel guide and jumping to the correct channel, like a real grown-up universal remote.

Fusion Garage is entering the tablet market with the JooJoo.  This tablet has a 12.1 inch (diagonal) widescreen display with 1366 X 768 pixels.  It’s 7.8 X 12.8 X 0.7 inches and weighs 2.4 pounds.  It offers WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and it has a USB port.  The JooJoo has built-in speakers, a microphone, and it has a camera for video conferencing.  It has a rechargeable lithium battery that Fusion Garage says lasts 5 hours with WiFi.  It uses a browser-based operating system, and it is Flash 10.1 and Java compliant.  It has a capacitive touch screen and accelerometer.  There is no mention on Fusion Garage of other applications for the JooJoo.  Fusion Garage is accepting pre-orders from the US now, with a promised ship date of 8-10 weeks.  The price is $499.

Using SurfaceSound technology, the new Tunebug Vibe ($70) lets you take a speaker with you basically anywhere you go. The Tunebug sports a stylish, triangular brushed metal body, an illuminated power button, and a standard 3.5mm input for compatibility with a wide range of audio sources, but the real magic is in the NXT-powered SurfaceSound Speaker, which turns nearly any surface — although hollow ones work best — into a makeshift speaker.

Buy $70

It only took 75 years or so, but someone finally got around to doing a first-rate redesign of the classic Monopoly board. Monopoly Revolution ($35; Fall 2010) eschews the game’s traditional square surface for a modern circular board, while retaining all the fun gameplay of the original. New features include updated “here and now” pricing, an electronic game pod that keeps track of players’ money — via electronic banking cards — and also provides sound effects and song clips that correspond with events in the game.

We’ve long wished that the iPhone or iPod touch came with an IR port so we could use it as the remote for our home theater systems. Although Apple doesn’t look like it will be building one in anytime soon, the L5 iPhone Remote ($50) is here to fill the void. This miniscule Dock-connecting accessory and companion app let you “build” your own interface using a library of buttons within the app, and then use the on-screen remote to control damn near any product you’d like using nothing but your iPhone or iPod touch.

l5remote.com

For those who believe that men must be the traditional breadwinner, then the Live Checking Card could come in handy in these modern times. After all, you would want to keep a close eye on just what your other half spends on while you’re hard at work in the office, wouldn’t you Judging by the card’s namesake, the Live Checking Card is capable of showing your accumulated spending amount right after any purchase. This is made possible thanks to e-ink technology that will refer to your purchase history with bank account transactions over the month via RFID. Still in the conceptual stage at point of publishing, we wonder whether stylish wives and girlfriends of the rich and famous would want to see their spending watched and possibly curbed in such a manner.

Professionally made desserts are all very well, but for true bake-it-yourself types, there’s nothing like a homemade confection. Much the way Sprinkles Cupcakes mixes aim to give baking enthusiasts a way to emulate professional results in their own kitchens, so Ticings allow them to add a dash of photographic-quality art.

Ticings are edible images that can be applied to cakes, cookies, brownies and cupcakes. Users need only peel them from their paper backing and then press them onto a baked confection. Whereas some baking embellishments drag when cut, Ticings merge with soft frosting to create edible art that creates no resistance for the knife. Launched last month, the US-made decorations—which are FDA approved, kosher certified and gluten free—are available from LA-based Ticings in sheets of 12 2.25-inch images for USD 15.95 or 35 1.25-inch images for USD 22.95. Themes include birthdays, weddings and seasonal motifs; shipping is available only within the continental US. Coming soon from the company are gourmet artisan sprinkles.

Giving crafty consumers yet another way to make it themselves—upgraded to help them compete with the professionals—Ticings will soon also be available through a bakery in northern California.

www.ticings.com