360 DEGREES Weblog

The new Keyport Slide is a personal access device like nothing this world has ever imagined. Keyport is light and durable with an ultra futuristic look, created quite deliberately to appeal to the design-conscious individual.

Keyport is a fully functioning work of art. Its beautifully contoured body houses the jagged objects we can’t live without. Each of your individual keys is copied to a compatible blank and attached to the internal slider apparatus. By simply depressing the buttons on either side of the shell you can slide each of your keys as they click into place for use. With an array of technology rich upgrades currently under development, Keyport promises to be the most advanced personal access device available. When form truly meets function, you will find no excessive details, only the stunning design of the world’s first universal key fob.

Launched a few weeks ago, Trivop claims to be the first online hotel video portal. Using Google maps to help users find hotels, the website gives them the next best thing to visiting a hotel in person—a video walkthrough. Each video begins with some street footage near the hotel. The video camera then takes the viewer up to the entrance and into the lobby and other public spaces, and on to a room. Videos are available for each of type of room a hotel offers (standard, deluxe, junior suite, etc), including shots of the bathroom and the view through the window. No running commentary, just some fairly innocuous background music. Additional information includes the five most recent reviews on TripAdvisor, a full street address and a link to the hotel’s website.

French Trivop currently lists 144 hotels in Paris and 11 in London. Within a few weeks, the site will expand its reach by harnessing the power and video cameras of the masses. Travellers (and hotels) will be able to upload videos they’ve shot. In addition to amateur videographers, Trivop is also seeking freelance filmmakers to shoot professional videos: “Trivop is convinced that hotels must provide a video on their website. We want to open up many business opportunities for you by building the biggest community of filmmakers all around the world for the hospitality industry.” About time, considering the very limited still and moving imagery most hotel websites offer. Thomas Owadenko, Trivop’s founder, informs us that 500 filmmakers signed up over the past three weeks.

Amidst the chaos of dietary requirements, five-a-day, buying organic, food miles and a new fangled sense of providence, choosing food has never been so wrought with issues. Whatever happened to buying something based upon the principle it tasted good?

Well, thankfully, one company has ticked all the ethical boxes and made sure their new lollies taste of something. Bensons, a small family run business based in the English countryside, has produced an ice-pop that contains nothing but fruit. Chilly Billy consists of no added sugars, waters, preservatives, or artificial colours – just pure English pressed apples and a handful of raspberries. In fact, eating two counts as one of your five portions of fruit and veg a day.

Jeremy Benson, managing director of Bensons said, “We really felt there was a gap in the market where ice-pops are concerned.” Taking a look in the freezers at a local supermarket, you can see why. So far they have only produced the Apple and Raspberry flavored pop, but if their current range of fruit juices are anything to go by, expect rhubarb, elderflower and cinnamon flavors making their way into iced-format.

We have seen egg shapes in home decor before, first as a game player’s paradise and later as a massage oasis, now the egg reappears as the inspiration for a sleek new bed. The Lomme includes light and sound therapy to remove outside disturbances and give you a protected feeling.

Women in the United States can now sign up to test-drive new products in exchange for their honest opinions and reviews at SheSpeaks.com. SheSpeaks is an online forum for product reviews. Only at SheSpeaks, there’s no cost for product testers, and products are chosen for reviewers based on their interests. (At Cherrypicka, members do the picking.) And as the name indicates, SheSpeaks is for women only, which isn’t surprising since women control over USD 5 trillion in spending in the United States and are responsible for 83% of all consumer purchases.

Here’s how it works: when users sign up, they complete a questionnaire about their interests, hobbies, likes and dislikes. SheSpeaks selects an appropriate product match, which the members receive in two to three weeks. Products are theirs to keep, as they try them out in their own homes and as part of their everyday lives. In exchange, members provide their candid feedback online on the SheSpeaks website. Discussion boards allow testers to exchange views and opinions with other women who have tested the same products. And after a test is complete, they can get the scoop on how their reviews may have impacted a product before it goes to market, which creates a nice feedback loop.

Membership at SheSpeaks is free, and the site also offers free products, special offers and valuable coupons for members to pass onto their friends. Not only does this form of tryvertising equal efficient and effective product research for manufacturers, but it’s a great way for them to connect directly with their intended markets. Product testing and sampling combined with an online community: definitely a concept that easily could expand to other product categories, countries and demographics.

While home stays might have fuddy-duddy connotations of boy scout troops or travelling bible groups, the Salone del Mobile in Milan—the annual international furniture fair that ends today—would have a hard time doing anything that isn’t cool. Which includes a Bed Sharing programme that kicked off this year.

The Bed Sharing project aims to show the host city’s most hospitable side, and actively involves Milan residents by inviting them to open up their homes to (young) conference attendees who haven’t been able to find or can’t afford regular accommodation in hotels. Shared bedrooms needn’t be palatial: “2 square meters are enough to put up a designer.”

It’s a simple way to add a personal touch and human scale to massive conferences and events, while helping local professionals expand their networks by meeting colleagues from abroad. One to set up for every major conference? Since almost everything can be arranged online, coordination costs aren’t high. And given most events’ very specific target audiences, sponsors should be easy to find. (Bed Sharing’s main partners were easyJet, Samsung and Italian mattress manufacturer Ennerev.)

Fat Duck, one of the world’s finest restaurants, (according to the Brits) has added a new layer to their tasting menu experience by adding an iPod to the proceedings. The Sound of the Sea is a seafood dish that is served with an iPod so that you can listen to the sea while you eat the food. Chef Heston Blumenthal has created the dish which includes shellfish juice made into a foam served along side a mixture of tapioca, fried breadcrumbs, crushed fried baby eels, cod liver oil and langoustine oil topped with abalone, razor clams, shrimps and oysters and three kinds of edible seaweed. The dish comes inside a glass-topped wooden box containing sand and seashells and is served with a glass of seaweed extraction and mirin. The 17-course meal also includes offerings such as a silver rose bush with edible petals and afterdinner whiskey gums.

Spain’s National Museum, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid opened 15 years ago in a hospital designed in 1769 by Francesco Sabatini, the court architect to King Charles III.

The Reina Sofia Museum, named after Spain’s Queen Sofia, soon needed more room and in 2005, it gained a spectacular extension. Designed by the Parisian architect Jean Nouvel with Madrid’s b720 Arquitectos and Alberto Medem, the 8,000 square-metre (86,000 square-foot) extension is a full-blown Nouvel with his trademark of constant interplay of transparency, shadows and light. (This is the same Nouvel whose work Brad Pitt so admires that he and Angelina Jolie named their daughter,
Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, after him).

The extension consists of three pavilions arranged around a central court and covered with a canopy of polished, lacquered aluminum stretching over from the existing building like a large, ominous shadow. To allow shafts of light to flow in, Nouvel has punctured holes into the aluminum plane.

Madrid-based Vidal y Asociados Arquitectos was then presented with the challenge of designing the interior of the museum’s 890-square-metre Arola Restaurant without hindering, changing or covering any of Nouvel’s outrageously bold building details. The rocket-red, shiny, bulging ceiling, the glass walls and all the concrete and metal had to become part of the interior of the restaurant named for its culinary master, two-Michelin-star restaurateur Sergi Arola.

The resulting restaurant interior defies verbal explanation. The tables don’t look like tables, they are more like parts of an unfinished experiment. These Band tables plus Sara and RS chairs were all designed specifically for this space. The lighting — mainly hidden in the tables and floors - is wireless and rechargeable so that the wiring does not intrude the space. All
this light adds to the eerie feeling of things moving and constantly reflecting each other. The atmosphere is both restless and calm, dynamic and serene. It certainly does not feel like any restaurant you’ve seen before.

Thanks Coolhunter.

If you follow a healthy diet regime then this Miele steam oven is just what you need to make sure your food is cooked in a healthy manner too. This free standing Miele steamer preserves the unspoiled natural flavour of the food as the food is not immersed in water and does not become bland or overcooked. So, it retains the freshness, natural color, vitamins and minerals of the food even after cooking. The steam oven features electronic dial controls, LED display, programmable cooking with auto switch off, programmable functions and enhanced vapour cooling system. The model sells for around €975.

When the selling gets tough, the tough get creative. Faced with a softening market and higher interest rates, today many real estate developers and agents must work harder to sell properties that would have been snapped up last year by frenzied buyers looking to lock in steadily rising prices. Now, with price appreciation slowing, properties that would have once been easy to sell take more time and require slicker marketing.
That’s why Michael Shvo, president of his eponymous real estate marketing company, SHVO Marketing, in New York, claims he is not selling real estate but lifestyle. “The right amenities exist, but they have to exist within the brand and the building,” he says. “The customer is all about the lifestyle. When you buy a mediocre product, that’s just a vanilla box with nothing in it.”
Shvo is one of a new breed of real estate professionals trying to redefine the way homes are marketed in today’s more cautious environment. Brokerages are strengthening their marketing arms, emphasizing heavy research and product development. (BUSINESSWEEK)

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