…something to think about…

We wanted to share this with everyone who is Innovative, Invents or Invests……..We didnt write this……..but we loved it when we read it.

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:

the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made…. How many other things are we missing?

Talking About Holiday Gadgets

http://www.miamiherald.com/1604/story/1354664.html

Mike Rivamonte, a former Broadway set and marketing designer, has been making whimiscal characters out of antique camera and electronic parts for years. He is currently showing his sculptures at Miami’s Bakehouse Art Complex, an art studio. Steve Greenberg of What’s Wow Now interviews Mike on his amazing innovation. www.mrivamonte.com . Big scoop – Mike just sold one of his sculptures to Marty Margulies, one of the biggest art collectors in the world.

You will hear more about this in our next Vlog but we were blown away
when we discovered this piece of art in Miami’s Bakehouse. Thanks to
talented sculptor Mike Rivamonte, What’s Wow Now may have found “its
calling”.

Let’s play ball on the Internet.

75 million people a month already do. There are 75 million sports fans that search the Internet each month to find the latest and the greatest news and information about their favorite team or player. Most fans have to rely on their local newspapers for info, but they find that limiting. Local newspapers don’t really give them the big picture scope. Yahoo tries to be the big picture platform, capturing 24 million monthly fans. Pretty impressive? For a while, yes.

Enter Ty Ahmad-Taylor, formerly of Comcast and Viacom, where he learned to deliver customized content to a very strong fan base. Now he is doing the same thing for sports with the creation of fanfeedr.com, a leading edge aggregator that gives real time sports news in one space, with one single feed. Fans customize what they want when they want it — teams and players. Users can also interact with other sports fans.

FanFeedr encourages sports fans to use Facebook for login because they know you don’t want to sign up for another social network. The site is indexing over 3,000 sources and matching them against more than 50,000 athletes and 4,000 sports teams, including 1,700 colleges and universities across 15 sports.

Not too long ago, I showcased a product from MicroFridge, which was a microwave-refrigerator-freezer combo. Over the years, I’ve seen many combo products including can opener-radio, toaster-egg poacher, and a coffee maker-weathercaster. Combo products are a clever way to re-invent devices that have been around for years. It’s smart marketing and the public often likes the convenience of linking two popular appliances.

But not all combos make sense. In fact, the other day I stumbled into a combo product that was nothing less than shocking.

The people who make Tasers, those self-defense stun guns, have now combined that product with an MP3 player.

Really– I’m not kidding

The Taser’s holster has a built in digital music player. The Taser MPH (Music Player Holster) contains a 1-gigabyte MP3 player that holds about 500 songs. According to an article in The Arizona Republic, a spokesperson for the company says, “It’s one more reason why you might be carrying the Taser C2 when you’re out and about,” and he added “It’s not so much of a gimmick as it is a reason for people to continue to carry” a Taser.

My personal opinion– this will not be a big seller. I don’t believe the audience for a Taser is looking for tunes to go along with a weapon. I could, however, be wrong and it might change Rock-n-Roll to Drop-Rock-n-Roll.

I do have to admit that this combo product got me thinking– what songs would I download into my Taser MPH?

Stop in the Name of Love?

Love Hurts?

The Electric Wave?

I will Survive?

If you have some suggestions–please feel free to add them to this blog post– and that’s What’s Wow Now

What’s Wow Now has seen it all, but this time we are really blown away by the Pulse Smartpens, a computer in a pen that digitally captures and syncs handwriting and audio together. This is so perfect for anyone who takes a lot of notes, hears great sound bites that they want to use again, and then can’t read their scribbles when it comes time to transcribe. It has happened to Steve and Lois a trillion times in their school and work life. In fact, everyone at one time or another has thought to themselves, “Why can’t there be a recorder in this pen that synchronizes with the notes I am taking so all I have to do is point to words I wrote and have the audio tell me what I can’t read?” Whala, it is here. This is going to amaze you.

What’s Wow Now interviews Karen Lee, Senior Marketing Manager of Livescribe, who tells us all about the making and marketing of various Pulse Smartpens the company is now offering. Unless you listen to the podcast, you are truly not going to understand the dynamics of the Pulse Smartpens. Yes, we have all seen and heard about a pen with a recorder, but who ever thought you could capture more than 400 hours of recorded audio. The most expensive pen Livescribe is offering is the 4GB at $199. 95 and the 2GB model is $169.95. The company is located in Oakland, Calif. For more information, email Jody Farrar at Edelman – jfarrar@ar-edelman.com

Despite our shaky economy, the one area in the consumer electronics field that seems to be thriving is GREEN.

At January’s CES 2010 (Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Jan 7-10) the one exhibit area that has significantly grown is the Sustainable Planet CE Spotlight, featuring (according to the press release) “technologies and services that benefit the environment, utilize new forms of energy and contribute to a sustainable lifestyle.” This area will increase by more than 40 percent in size over the 2009 International CES.

This is amazing considering how so many other areas of CES are shrinking or have disappeared all together.

Over the past few months I’ve seen green cell phones, green GPS’s, green bluetooth speakerphones, green toilets, green clock radios, and much more.

For the upcoming CES you’ll find green “located in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sustainable Planet will feature more than 30 exhibitors focused on product advancements in green building, sustainable packaging, automotive, wireless and alternative energy technologies across 5,500 net square feet of exhibit space.”

But I’m left with a feeling in the pit of my stomach that maybe these green products really aren’t so green after all.

• Does the product contain chemicals that will harm the planet?
• Does the manufacturing and shipping of the product use more resources than the product saves?
• Is the packaging green?

Recently the FDA attacked cereal makers that made claims that their morning cereal boosted a child’s immune system. With flu fears running rampant, a boosted immune system claim could convince a worried Mom to pick that breakfast cereal. And yes, there were vitamins added to the cereal that might boost an immune system. But the FDA pointed out that you could spray vitamins on saw dust and make the same claim about the saw dust. Yes, there is something on the cereal that boosts the immune system but are these cereals really nutritious?

That brings me back to green gadgets– sure there’s some aspect of each one of these products that is green. But when you look at the overall product is it helping the planet? Is it truly good for our environment? Or is just another marketing tool?

It would be wonderful if some outside agency could evaluate products to let consumers know what really is green and what is being labeled green just so it can make more green ($$$).