360 DEGREES Weblog

It was once the stuff of bikers and rebels. It meant danger. Poison. Trouble ahead.
Now the skull-and-crossbones design more likely means “Pirates of the Caribbean” and a boatload of related merchandise.
With its third chapter of the blockbuster film franchise set to hit theaters May 25, Disney is unveiling pirate products from couture fashions to costume jewelry, plus toys, shoes, electronics, furniture and even “healthy pirate snacks for energy.” (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Remember those sliding picture puzzles that terrorized you as a kid? Now that idea has been taken to a new level with this concept design of a sliding puzzle desk by Hsien Chang. The panels on top of the desk slide around to unveil different storage areas where a variety of your goods can be kept and organized. This desk only has a total of four tiles covering five different compartments, so it is a fairly easy puzzle to navigate through.

Thanks Gizmodo

Aqua Dome is a 140-room, four-star-plus hotel and spa complex in Tirol Therme Längenfeld, the Tyrolean Alps in Austria. The altitude must have had an effect on the planners and designers because the place is out-of-this world heavenly.

The services are impressive and the facilities absolutely beautiful although somewhat counterproductively named with words too difficult to pronounce unless you speak German. The dome-ceilinged, glass-walled thermal spring hall Ursprung (Origins) is the main indoor area with two pools and a huge waterfall. From there, you swim via two canal pools to the amazing outdoor area, Talfrische (Freshness Valley). With its illuminated structures and steaming vessels it resembles the potion-making lab of a gigantic but friendly sorcerer. The two canals lead to a cone-shaped illuminated tower. From there you proceed to the three bowl pools that look like gigantic martini glasses. Bobbing in one of these eight-metre-high bowls that are 12 to 16 meters in diameter, you can gaze upon the Alps and contemplate your good fortune.

Aqua Dome is located about 70 kilometers from Innsbruck and 180 kilometers from Munich in Längenfeld in the heart of the beautiful 67-kilometre-long Tirolean Ötztal valley known as a thermal springs area since the 16th century. Aqua Dome’s 3000-year-old, 40-degree Celsius sodium-chloride-sulphate-sulphur thermal waters flow from this ancient valley.

Aqua Dome was designed by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. They are the 2001 recipients of the Pritzker price, the highest honor in architecture (also bestowed on Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas, among others) and have also designed the new Tate Gallery in London, Prada Tokyo and the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics.

The Aqua Dome is Austria’s largest tourism project of recent years. It has revitalized tourism in the entire area, long known for fabulous hiking, skiing, mountaineering and white water rafting.

The iLoad lets you transfer material from your CDs to you iPod at 5 times faster than ‘real time’. And without a computer in the way. So a full audio CD should take around 8 minutes to transfer across. Not a bad idea, eh? Speeds are affected by scratches on the disc though, so very old collections could take 40 years or so to copy across. Or something like that. $299.00.

iLoad offers convenience and portability. No waiting for a computer to “boot” up, no need to fill up a hard disk with large music and video files. Why does your music and video have to be transferred onto a computer just to get it onto your iPod anyway? It doesn’t…with iLoad.

Filmmaker Michael Moore says on his Web site that his new documentary, “SiCKO,” “will expose the health-care industry’s greed and control over America’s political processes.”
Controversy has become a key ingredient of marketing the Flint native’s work, and the backers of “SiCKO” hope that the new movie will stir up emotions and help generate the kind of buzz that made his last movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” both a topic of national debate and an unprecedented blockbuster in the documentary genre. “Fahrenheit 9/11″ had a budget of $6 million and grossed more than $100 million in the U.S. alone.
Moore’s formula is simple: Pick a divisive topic and goad opponents into a public debate before the movie opens. (WALL STREET JOURNAL)

Witness the 18th century’s greatest animal painter Jean Baptiste Oudry’s realistic life-size masterpieces.

Nice idea!

Amazon on Wednesday moved to shake up the online music business by setting up a direct rival to Apple’s iTunes which will sell tracks without copyright protection.
The online retailer’s decision to enter the music market could bolster the fortunes of the largest record companies. They have been desperate for an alternative to iTunes in order to gain more leverage in negotiations over pricing and other issues for the burgeoning digital market – particularly at a time when sales of compact discs are plunging.
However, their excitement about Amazon’s new service, which will debut later this year, may be tempered by its decision to sell tracks for MP3s without the so-called digital rights management, which prevents consumers from freely copying and transfer their music among a variety of devices – from iPods to personal computers and compact discs. (FINANCIAL TIMES)

It has often been cited that the heart of the home is the kitchen and nowadays, kitchen designs have undeniably hit new highs. Slovenian household appliance manufacturer Gorenje has taken wraps off a new black kitchen collection designed by French designer Ora-Ito. The new Gorenje Ora-Ito Collection is an upshot of the company’s endeavor to offer the modern-day customers a high-handedly designed yet reasonably priced kitchen collection.

The novel collection merges the latest technology and idiosyncratic design altogether. Fascinatingly, the famed designer names his style ‘Simplexity,’ a mishmash of simplicity and complexity. The Gorenje Ora-Ito Collection features fridge-freezers, ovens, ceramic hobs, extractor hoods, with either black or silver finishes.

The non-competitive and the downright incompetent have very few stones left to hide under: never before have consumers’ purchase decisions been so strongly influenced by all kinds of transparency. In fact, TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY now rules:

“Old economy fog is clearing: no longer can incompetence, below-par performance, ignored global standards, anti-social & anti-eco behavior, or opaque pricing be obscured. In its place has come a transparent, fully informed marketplace, where producers have no excuse left to underperform. TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY for some, TRANSPARENCY TRIUMPH for others.

Anyone who wants to see transparency in action should spend a few hours on flyertalk, igougo.com or TripAdvisor. The latter alone boasts more than 20 million visitors each month and has amassed close to 5 million registered users and over 7 million reviews and opinions covering 23,000 cites and 180,000 hotels, as well as more than 540,000 candid traveler photos of 40,000 hotels.
It’s not just travel, though: countless other sites, from epinions to Amazon, are inviting consumers to share their experiences on everything from kitchen knives to cars. No wonder some brands feel that transparency of reviews and recommendations has reached its zenith. However, what’s out there today is nothing compared to the transparency madness that brands will have to deal with over the next few years.

Thanks: Trendwatching.com