360 DEGREES Weblog

Kim Kardashian has produced a mini-documentary titled The Spindustry about the promotion for Sugar Factory’s luxury lollipops with Kardashian friend Jonathan Cheban of Command PR.

Kim Kardashian has her own line of lollipops with the company. The pops each have crystal-covered sticks and interchangeable color-coordinated heads. Former Spice Girl Mel B also has a line of the pops. The Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears had lines of the lollipops to support their most recent tours. The Couture Pops cost $25 each and additional heads are $12 for three.

Virtue may be its own reward, but that doesn’t mean tangible prizes won’t make the deal even sweeter. Just as SmartyCard uses gifts from popular vendors and family sites to reward kids for completing educational games, so Switch2Health uses much the same approach to motivate them to exercise.

New Jersey-based Switch2Health now offers the S2H REPLAY, a fun and innovative wrist-worn device aimed at tweens and teens that allows them to quantify their level of physical activity. In addition to displaying the date and time, the device also tracks and registers continuous, moderate-intensity activity, subdividing each hour into 20 three-minute segments. When users complete a full 60 minutes of physical activity over time, the device generates a reward code that can be uploaded and converted into points on the company’s website. Those points are redeemable for items such as gift cards or free months of membership at sponsors including Barnes & Noble, GameStop, Best Buy, Webkinz and Club Penguin. Consumers can also set each other specific challenges and reward them for success using S2H REPLAY. No cables or software are required, nor is there any need to recharge the device’s battery. Available online for USD 19.95, S2H REPLAY is water-resistant and available in three sizes. The device comes with a blue silicone band, but alternate colours are available for USD 2.99 each. A fully brandable device is also available for use in corporate promotions.

As part of a recently announced partnership with Boston Celtics captain Paul Pierce, S2H REPLAY will soon be incorporated into Pierce’s FitClub34 from Harvard Pilgrim.

If you are wondering what the future of kitchens will be, well, we have seen it and it’s high-tech. Offering a glimpse of trends of what our kitchens will hold in the future, “Kitchen Concept 2015″ focuses on design, convenience, ergonomics, electrification and multimedia networking. Designed by Hettich, the Kitchen Concept 2015 has utilized the electric kitchen furniture elements along with the possibilities in many application scenarios. Disguised as a piece of modern art, the concept makes extra effort not to become a social gathering spot of the house rather it is integrated in the home environment to limit the space needed by appliances. While the concept looks forward to more innovations as the technology makes improvement, it already looks closer to reality than it appeared at the first glance.

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

When companies search for a new salesperson, you know they scrutinize each candidate’s track record before making an offer. When consumers hire a real estate agent to sell their home, however—probably the biggest asset they own—the choice is often made by chance. Enter Homethinking, a site that aims to bring transparency to U.S. real estate agents so as to help homeowners pick the best one for them.

New York-based Homethinking puts agents under a spotlight so consumers can quickly identify the ones that shine. Toward that end, it crawls the web to find out what each agent has accomplished in the past, including how many houses they’ve sold, in what areas and for what prices, and how the actual sale price compared with the one that was advertised. Homethinking also interviews the people whose houses the agent sold for information such as how well he or she interacted with prospective customers, how they set expectations around the sales price and how responsive they were when questions arose. It then presents all the resulting data for consumers’ perusal, in an easy to use form that’s browsable and searchable by city, state and ZIP code. When they’ve found one who looks promising, consumers can contact him or her at their own initiative.

Of course, it’s not just consumers who stand to benefit from this new transparency. Realtors themselves can claim and edit their profiles, contribute neighbourhood reviews and otherwise showcase their talents; they can also upload their listings and have them syndicated for free to Craigslist, Trulia and Zillow. And that, in turn, is where the transparency tyranny becomes transparency triumph.

I do my best to avoid McDonald’s whenever I can. No, it has nothing to do with eating healthy or anything like that. Rather, I spent the better part of my teenage years working at one of those fine establishments and as a result have had enough of their food to last a lifetime. I will say that I now have a good reason to visit the golden arches; the free Wi-Fi.

On Friday McDonald’s opened up their Wi-Fi connections at 11,500 of their 14,000 US stores. That means there’s a good chance you’ll have unlimited free internet at your local McDonald’s restaurant. If you want to be absolutely sure before packing up your laptop and heading out, you can double-check which stores in your area are giving away free internets using their handy online tool.

Remember the excitement you felt receiving mail as a child? That’s the inspiration behind San Francisco-based Little Passports, a new educational subscription service that aims to turn 5-to-10-year-olds into world travellers, one country at a time. Little Passports delivers monthly travel packages designed to provide a fun, hands-on way for kids to learn about other countries without leaving home. The first shipment in the USD 10.95 per month subscription prepares little voyagers for their global adventure with a mini suitcase, passport, world map and a letter and photo introducing their travel guides, Sam and Sofia.

Each following month, children receive a personalized letter and package from Sam and Sofia, which includes travel-related items like a passport stamp, suitcase sticker and collectible boarding pass to access online games and activities that teach geography, history, culture and vocabulary. As the months pass, little travellers notch up a jetsetter’s stamp-filled passport, personalize their suitcase, and pack it with country-specific souvenirs.

In an era dominated by electronic communication, people are embracing concepts from a slower age, like the company that transforms emails into paper letters and one that resurrected the classic telegram. Little Passports combines that nostalgia for ‘real’ mail and combines it with the convenience of a subscription service.

We’ve seen myriad examples of hotels partnering with non-hotel brands, including W Hotels’ collaboration with Puma for in-hotel fitness services, as well as sponsored rooms in various hotels. Now taking the branding even further is La Casa del Camino Hotel in Laguna Beach., Calif., where every one of the hotel’s 10 newly renovated suites features a different, immersive branded experience.

Billabong Suite 206, for example, is designed to be a surfer’s paradise, with artwork including a 3D piece that tells the company’s history through images of surfers, palm trees and the Billabong logo cut into reclaimed wood. Glacéau Suite 315, meanwhile, features aquatic hues and fabrics made, appropriately, from recycled plastic bottles. Other brands involved include Rip Curl, etnies, Roxy, Quiksilver, L* Space and Lost International. A different designer was recruited to create the theme in each branded suite; together, they are all part of the Casa Surf Project in the Riviera Magazine Design series. Pricing for each suite begins at about USD 250 per night, and a portion of the proceeds is donated to charity during the hotel’s first year. Pets are welcome.

Whereas many of the in-hotel branding efforts we’ve covered have amounted to tryvertising initiatives, this one is closer to a collection of brand spaces, offering patrons an immersive look at each brand’s signature style. In addition to tapping into the name recognition of those brands, of course, La Casa del Camino’s use of corporate sponsorship also no doubt helped subsidize the costs of renovation.

Ditch your smartphone and go retro with your day planning using the Casio Databank Watch ($110). Boasting an auto calendar, calculator, currency converter, stop watch, alarm clock, and more, the Databank aims to bring you 21st century organization in a decidedly 20th century-styled package, complete with auto LED light with Afterglow, face mounted numerical keys, and a white body with rubberized resin band.

f there’s anything less pleasant than breaking a bone, it’s having to stare at a drab, ugly and increasingly dirty cast over the weeks or months it takes for recovery. Enter Casttoo, a Colorado firm that makes tattoo-like decals to transform those unsightly orthopedic eyesores into graphic works of art.

Available in a wide variety of original designs based on themes including fantastical creatures, tribal images, sports and holidays, Casttoo’s decals are crafted from an adhesive film that fuses with the plaster cast in seconds when blasted with a hot hairdryer. Prices range from USD 20 for a small design suitable for children’s wrist and arm casts to USD 40 for an extra-large design that fully covers an adult half-leg or full arm. International shipping is available, as are customized designs; consumers can even send Casttoo a digital file of their X-ray for conversion into an on-cast decal. Through a partnership with 3M, meanwhile, Casttoo offers “starter kits” for clinics and hospitals including customized logos and 100 decals in a variety of sizes.

Whether it’s casts, cars, garage doors or parking lot walls, opportunities abound in bringing a splash of art and personalization to an otherwise unadorned part of life. Next up, we’d expect to see Casttoo allow customers to upload their own designs, beyond personal X-rays—and maybe even kick off a crowdsourcing effort whereby the best such customer-made creations are ultimately voted into production (with rewards, of course, for their creators).