Douglas M. Gaus
www.newproductconsultant.com

The swamp crooner responsible for many a gold albums (made up of countless golden hits recorded by his most famous band Creedence Clearwater Revival) has announced that he's recorded some new music under the guise of one of his previous music alter egos.  Back in 1973, after CCR sadly disbanded, John Fogerty released a little noticed album called the "Blue Ridge Rangers".  The album went well under the radar for most of his CCR fans, but for those of who were able to get a hold of the music (maybe years later during the Napster era?) were treated to some great covers of some classic country and gospel songs. For the Blue Ridge Ranger album, Fogerty meticulously played all the instruments on every song (along with his regular throat stripping duties), something he insisted on doing also for his follow-up 1975 release "John Fogerty", as well as his 1985 "comeback" release "Centerfield".

The old man down the road has said he has reprised his own sound with a sequel to the original called "John Fogerty: The Return of the Blue Ridge Rangers".  This time around, Fogerty doled out some help from Buddy Miller (guitar),  Dennis Crouch (bass), Jay Bellerose and Kenny Aronoff (sticks), along with Greg Leisz (rounding out the instrumentation).  Fogerty is putting out his feelers for a hopeful CD release of the recordings and a possible live tour to support the album (why do we still call them albums?) and hopes are that he does.

Fogerty's latest hopeful new product intro is much like an automobile manufacturer re-releasing a tried but true classic (like early Ford Mustangs), but re-engineering them to have more modern styling to fit current consumer tastes.  In Fogerty's case, the sales of the original Rangers album were not that great, but the sound was truly classic.  Fogerty believes that the public is now better ready to listen to his classic Blue Ridge Ranger sound, and based on the sound of the first, I think he may be right...

 A company spun from my home state called NailJack Tools is getting raves for their two newly introduced hardware tools.  They got some heads a turning (and some sale orders a' written) at the recent National Hardwares Show in Las Vegas.  Based on the interest from the show, they also got a great write-up in Popular Mechanics, as one of The Top 15 New Tools for PM's Editor's Choice Awards.

The nail biting cousins, NailJack and NailHunter, are turbocharged cats paws with the addition of plier grabbing utility; this allows one to remove any type of unwanted wood fasteners still clinging to their host, mainly nails, brads and staples.  At the center of their i.p. on both of their tools is a great spoon shaped fulcrum, which allows the tools to remove your unwanted wood fasteners with ease.  They also have a hammer tap located on the backside of each tool, so you can easily tap the tools beak into the wood, for those really embedded hot-dipped animals.

NailJack Tools was also in the news not too long ago; they had been looking at buying the former Vise-Grip Factory for their manufacturing, but sadly, the deal fell apart.  It would have given a perk tthe the town of Dewitt, Nebraska, which was devastated when Vise-Grips owner, Irwin Tools, decided to close the factory and transfer Vise-Grips manufacturing to you know where.

Not sure where NailJack Tools are currently being manufactured, but I'm guessing they settled for the Orient for the time being.  But let's hope they don't get too ingrained over there and are able to finalize plans to manufacture here in the U.S...Stay tuned... 

NewScientist is reporting of a recently filed "Cone of Silence" related invention by two engineers out of MIT ...The system uses sensors to determine the location of any offending eavesdroppers, then uses strategically located speakers to send out just the right amount of white noise to mask out conversations of the self-deemed important talkers.

Are open phone or office conversations in today's workplace really that big of a problem?  Or could this targeted strictly for use for the lower echelon, so that the upper echelon can't hear them talking regularly about fantasy football, stories of who got blotto'ed the night before, or more importantly, the annointment of a new Queen of the Babes, a recent company W-2 filler out-er unanimously nominated (discreetly) by her peers? 

Maybe when this conversation muted system is available in the future, you or one of your co-workers can put this muting system in the suggestion box; if purchased and installed by your company, it would be a way to help you improve productivity...This would allow you to talk confidently all day about whatever you want, without having to make all that extra effort to see who's lurking behind you or snooping from the adjacent cubicle...