Mary Lou Boo-Hoo
American Inventor Judge or
Dr. Suess Character?
(Does this make Doug Hall the Grinch?)

---

"Every Boo-Hoo

Down in Lou-ville

Liked Crying Inventors a lot...

But the Grinch,

Who sat just North of Mary Boo-Hoo,

Did NOT!"

---

Could Mary Lou Boo-Hoo be more inconsistent in her judging choices?
I find it a little ironic that the two inventions that evoked the most tears and rage had a lot in common by way of market potential.

Early in this week's episode of American Inventor, Judge Mary Lou Quinlan completely lost her cool when an inventor demonstrated a piece of "clothing" that was really just human gift bow. While this invention was a bit hokey, it was really just a piece of novelty lingerie that could easily have been (and probably is being) sold on the internet for 20 bucks and be quite profitable. If people are buying THIS -- they would certainly buy that body-bow thing.

Was the creator of this product the next American Inventor? No. If I was sitting in the judge's chair, I would probably not have passed this inventor through to the the next round -- but neither would I have gone all wacky and walked off the stage to find a coat to cover-up the nekkid chick demonstrating the bow.

Yes, the bow was demonstrated on by a woman who actually got naked during their presentation. Doug Hall and Peter Jones simply giggled (Seriously. They giggled!), and I think Ed Evanelista just stared and drooled as Mary Lou bounced off walls in search of something to cover the "stupid naked girl", as I believed she referred to the woman during her bout of crazy.

As a woman, Mary Lou could have felt the lady was objectifying herself in a way that demeaned women in general -- but where was her outraged when those tree-trimming wackoids from the first episode were making L. Frank Baum do his grave-spinning routine? It's a NAKED WOMAN. Get over it.

In the end, this was a very niche product that could be easily and cheaply produced, with a definite audience that I think would spend money on this product as a gag gift or sex toy. If edible underwear can become a novelty mainstay for so many years -- this body bow could have turned a profit from sales to strip-joints alone. You don't have to (nor should you) pass it to the next round -- but it wasn't going to destroy civilization (or take away women's right to vote.)

NOW... TIVO to the very LAST invention of the evening -- a moisture absorbing wig insert -- the flipside of Mary-Lou-Bi-Polar-Boo-Hoo comes out to play. This invention was presented by a woman with a nekkid HEAD instead of a nekkid body. Sadly, the woman suffered from cancer or some other disease (I was unclear what caused the hairloss) and turned a pantyliner into wig-wicking insert to keep perspiration away from the scalp.

Nice invention. A small, devoted audience would be passionate and pay money for this product. You could sell a ton of them on the internet and in specialty shops. All the exact same positive statements that could be said of the body-bow! -- BUT neither of them should have been passed to the next round! And it wouldn't have, if Mary Lou hadn't Boo-Hoo-Blackmailed fellow judge Peter Jones into caving and reversing his vote. But, Doug Hall's opinion gets called "Cold, physics B.S." because he stuck to his guns and rightfully judged the invention unsuitable to the purpose of the show?? ARGH!

Related Links...
Clip of Simon Cowell (of all people!) calling Doug Hall the "most annoying man in America."

Check out Doug Hall's weekly commentary on American Inventor (great stuff!)

Single Deduction, Double Malt.
Bloody brilliant idea -- TavernTax.com is a convenient on-site tax prep conpany will come to your local pub in order to process your tax returns!

What a way to lower the stress associated with filing taxes.
You order a stiff drink if you're worried about the size of that amount due to be paid, or celebrate that huge return by buying a round for the house.

No word on whether they can apply your tax return to the bar tab...
Visit TavernTax.com

Buffy Still Slays 'em...
Whitney Matheson (diva of all that is pop culture) agrees with me.

USA Today's resident hipster shares a new experience I found cool and creative (especially since I've a Buffy fan from the beginning) -- it's Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Rocky Horror Picture Show.

According to Whitney, there was much laughing and singing and gnashing of plastic vampire teeth. Read more here!

iMPRESSED
Love, love LOVE the effort being put forth by Georgia College and State University in embracing the iPod as a community building and learning tool.

Some excerpts from the article...

At least 100 of the rural school's employees are turning iPods into education or research tools -- impressive for a college with only about 300 faculty. But it's more than simply making class lectures available -- a practice now routine at many colleges and even a few high schools.

History professor Deborah Vess asks students to download 39 films to their video-capable iPods so she doesn't have to spend class time screening the movies. Psychology professor Noland White has found a new-age answer to office hours: a podcast of the week's most asked questions.

And the 5,500-student campus has organized a group of staff and faculty to conjure up other uses for the technology. Called the iDreamers, the team bats around ideas that could turn iPods into portable yearbooks and replace campus brochures with podcasts.

This school year, it started iVillage, a virtual community that encouraged incoming students to start communicating before the start of classes. The first dozen freshmen recruited for the effort were asked to think up innovative uses for the iPods.

The team is creating an iPod-based freshmen survival guide that includes advice on classes, dorms and nightlife in this sleepy community 100 miles south of Atlanta.

Bobby Jones, a freshman from Rome, said he's found life in a "virtual community" surprisingly satisfying.

Brilliant stuff. It's no wonder that GCSU was rewarded for its iPod ingenuity when it was chosen to host Apple's Digital Campus Leadership Institute in November.

How great is the change in the education dynamic when the students are telling the teachers how they can (and are willing) to learn more? How much of an impact does it make when the teachers listen to that feedback and build the tools to not just help their students learn better, but to embrace the tools themselves and become better teachers?

There may be hope for the American education system yet!

Here's a link to something that got me started on this riff --

iAmplify.com.

It's a pretty cool new site that provides downloadable podcasts on a variety of personal development topics, by a wide range of recognized experts. I plan a spending a bit of time poking around on this site, and perhaps looking into providing some DTIG content to their menu.

American Inventor
Not Very Inventive
NOT an impressive first showing for the new Thursday night series by Simon Cowell. Pretty disappointing.

Part of the draw for early episodes of American Idol is watching the dreck and freaks of talentless contestants try to make their way through the judging process and get roasted back into reality by Simon and Company. You occasionally get rewarded by being surprised by the few who demonstrate actual talent. Not so with American Inventor. It was a parade of practically useless paraphernalia. Most of the inventors didn't even seem to have a real reason to have created their product in the first place.

I don't think I would have let ANY of them pass to the next round. I can only imagine that fear began to set in to the producers' minds that there wouldn't BE a next round if a few people didn't make it through the gauntlet.

It seemed the best way to assure yourself of at least one vote was to tell a story that could get Mary Lou Quinlan to cry... of course, getting HER vote almost guaranteed you'd lose Doug Hall's. Their on-air relationship makes the one between Simon and Paula look like Ward and June.

Bad TV shows will always be with us, but there's a greater problem to consider... If the ideas presented on that show truly were the most inventive concepts that American minds have to offer, we are in TROUBLE.

By way of rebuttle -- here's a quote from Doug Hall's website:

"As I told the Inventor Group in San Francisco - real inventors are going to HATE this show. Then again - that's probably good because if it was a real inventor show - it would be boring TV - it would be Geek TV and maybe 12 people would watch it.

I think what you're going to see is BIG TIME REALITY TV - amplified emotions, hyped drama -- all that stuff that makes for a very successful TV show, AND AS SUCH IT'S GOING TO MAKE ROCK STARS OUT OF
EVERY INVENTOR ON EARTH."

Well... okay. Maybe I'll stick around to watch episode two.

American Inventor
A new show featuring innovative product ideas being evaluated and eliminated by a panel of three judges premieres Thursday night on ABC. It's called American Inventor, and there's nothing especially original about the concept. This appears to be a mash-up of a show the USA Network had on back in September of 2005 called "Made In The USA" and the American Idol format. The resemblance to American Idol is no accident, as the the show is being produced by Mr. Mean himself, Simon Cowell.

The only thing that's going to have me tuning in Thursday, is that one of the judges is Doug Hall -- the idea guru who helped to inspire me to go into the idea-selling business. I even had a chance to visit Doug's Eureka Ranch brainstorming facility in Cincinnati, Ohio to work with Doug and his team of Trained Brains in generating ideas for a few of his clients. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

The brain-blessed Mr. Hall is one of the charter inductees to my personal innovation hall of fame, and it's going to be interesting watching him on tv and hearing his opinions on the ideas offered up by Joe Public. But, given the base UNoriginality of the show itself, I can only wonder why the creators didn't take advantage of Doug Hall's pedigree and have him spin it into something destined to be infinitely more successful than its current incarnation -- Perhaps something more along the lines of his weekly radio show, Brain Brew?

American Inventor premieres March 16th at 8pm EST.

Cheer Up, Charlie
Wonka may have only had 5 Golden Tickets, but Prince will be hiding 14 of them in his new CD release "3121", due out later this month. Lucky folks finding these tickets will be entitled to a private concert at the Purple One's Los Angeles home. (I'm betting eBay is going to have a field day with fraud prevention on this one.)

While not a wholly original concept, it is creative. It may even serve to provide enough purple-powered promotional push to create another "Purple Reign" in the early stages of the CD release. No word yet if Wendy and Lisa have been replaced with Oompa Loompas.

Full scoop appears in this Promo Magazine article.

Blog Buzz Tracks Trends
Excellent article from the Washington Post shares some examples of how companies use blogs to track consumer trends. From discovering the end of old fads to uncovering new obsessions earlier.

Read it here.