360 DEGREES Weblog

Long-distance relationships are difficult enough to maintain among adults, but when young kids are involved, the chances of achieving a meaningful conversation from afar tend to diminish. That’s where Readeo comes in, with a newly launched platform that lets families share bedtime stories through the web.

The Chicago-based company’s patent-pending application integrates digitised picture books with webcam communication, allowing adults and children to share stories while seeing and interacting with each other. A diverse library is available on the site, including titles from publishers such as Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, Candlewick Press, Blue Apple Books and Chronicle Books. The library is fully searchable, and families can create personalised virtual bookshelves of their favourites. A Book of the Month is available to all users for free, but unlimited use of the site costs USD 9.95 per month or USD 49.95 per year.

With its focus on stories, Readeo promises a new point of connection for families separated by travel, divorce, military service or just geographic dispersion. Currently, however, the site serves only United States users.

Website: www.readeo.com

Thanks Springwise

That’s right, Google Maps now offers biking directions in the US. Just enter your destination, and you’ll get step-by-step directions, complete with outlined trails, biking lanes, and bike-friendly roads.

We’ve seen several efforts recently to bring Facebook photos into the offline world, such as HotPrints’ free, advert-supported albums. Now bringing such capabilities to brick-and-mortar stores comes a new initiative from Kodak that lets consumers print online photos from Facebook and Picasa using its in-store kiosks.

Starting this summer, users of Kodak Picture Kiosks will be able to access their web albums on Facebook and Picasa as well as Kodak’s own Kodak Gallery service. The kiosks will make 4×6in (102×152mm) prints of the photos, provided the resolution is high enough to make a quality print. Kodak says it also intends to connect with other social networking sites around the globe.

Given that more than 3 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook alone each month, there are plenty of opportunities for forging OFF=ON connections for consumers whose memories increasingly reside in the virtual world.

Thanks Springwise

Companies are catching on to the fact that bloggers can provide an effective way to create buzz about their brands. We’ve seen several efforts that explicitly recognise that fact, such as TasteCasting for restaurants and YokmoK’s free travel giveaways. Bringing the notion into the world of new consumer products is Swagapalooza, an invitation-only event that gives influential bloggers free samples of new products.

Created by Bay Area startup Launch Hear, Swagapalooza aims to give entrepreneurs a way to get their producs in front of the most-followed bloggers and tweeters from across the United States. The first event was held in New York in September last year. At it, brands including Surprise Industries, Idea Paint and Switch2Health had the chance to make presentations to the select audience of 100 bloggers, 20 Twitterers and 5 Redditors. In exchange for their participation, the audience members were entitled to free samples of any of the products being presented.

 What does it take to chronicle the slopes of Canada’s mountains for Google Street View? A dash of ingenuity, a little MacGyvering and the ability to have some fun along the way.

Google’s Street View team shot the slopes at Canada’s Whistler Blackcomb ski resort with a tricked out snowmobile. They equipped the snowmobile with a Street View camera system that was pulled together using duct tape, and extra hard drives. They also mounted the cameras on SUVs to drive on the snow-covered roads.

The results are impressive: You can stand on top of a mountain, exactly where skiers will be starting their runs, and “ski” downhill from there, viewing relatively high-resolution images the whole way. The little Street View man even turns into a skier in the Street View interface.

“The motivation to really get this project going was you have to the upcoming 2010 Olympics here and we wanted to try and capture some beautiful imagery so everyone can experience what it is really like to be up on the slopes,” says Daniel Ratner, senior mechanical engineer at Google in the video below.

Vitamin D Video has officially gone out of beta and is now available in 1.0. The basic, single camera version of the software is available now for free while a two camera version costs $49 and unlimited cameras costs $199. The software watches a web-based camera – including many popular models from Linksys and D-Link – and records motion as it it happens, even alerting you when humans step into the frame.

I’ve been using the beta for months now with a Linksys WVC54GCA and I consider the software an early warning system for the home. Since I work up in the attic I can’t always tell if I’m facing a friend or a foe at the front door so I rely on Vitamin D to ping whenever someone comes into the frame. Special motion sensing systems also pick up lights and other activity outside while the system can also email clips to a mailbox whenever an event occurs or ring a chime.

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.

The door-to-door approach may have been the best way to reach Avon customers of yesteryear, but those days are gone. That’s even more true for Mark, Avon’s sister brand targeting a younger, trendier audience. Makes perfect sense, then, that Avon recently launched an e-tailing platform that allows its Mark representatives to sell on Facebook.

Using Mark’s new direct-sales widget for online social media, reps for the brand—primarily high-school and college-age girls—can now sell products via the Facebook boutique online. To make that possible, the Mark page features not just the standard “wall” and “info” tabs but also a “shop” tab that lets users browse and purchase products. Customers on the site can search for and make friends with reps in their area, and they can also sign up to be reps themselves. Combining community, marketing and sales, the Facebook boutique can be customized by each representative and used to sell products without ever leaving home. Mark also has a free iPhone application that lets reps view products on their phones rather than page through a traditional paper catalog, StyleList reported. Forthcoming applications will reportedly allow users to create online wish lists and post shopping widgets directly into reps’ blogs.

With more than 350 million users around the globe, there’s no denying the power of Facebook to reach young, tech-savvy consumers.

Website: www.facebook.com/mark-girl

Sure, it’s not quite as elegant as a little cube jutting out of one corner of the iPhone à la Square, but it looks like the Payware Mobile could certainly double as a pretty sturdy case should it drop. More importantly, the backing of VeriFone means this mobile payment peripheral has some pretty important backing and should be able to hit the ground running. That magical date should be January 15th of next year, free on a 2-year Payware Connect contract, and pre-orders are now live on the website for those who want to join in on the phone. Just one word of advice: when you hand the iPhone over for someone to sign as proof of purchase, make sure you’re able to outrun the chap. Just in case.