All tech talk/organization aside, if there’s one OTHER thing I relish, it’s hearing stories of success. Such is the case when I got a copy of a DVD in my hands called “Prima Princessa Presents Swan Lake”.

The DVD is charming, and without even watching a single frame, the mere thought of nostalgia from my childhood days of tutu’s and my parents meeting their six-year old daughter backstage at dance recitals with flowers made me misty-eyed just thinking about it.

The 40-minute DVD starts with an introduction from the animated cartoon fairy, Prima Princessa. She then takes a gaggle of tutu-clad preschoolers through several acts of Swan Lake (performed by the Paris Opera Ballet), narrating the storyline while the dancers perform. Who knew Swan Lake had a more dizzying storyline than Desperate Housewives?

In between acts is the fun part, where obviously talented young students from the School of American Ballet teach basic ballet moves for the kids to try at home while they are watching.

Zoe, my 14-month old loved it, and still continues to love it. As enthralled as a 14-month old can be with a movie, she watched the DVD, pointed at the fairy, and danced. Let me tell you, there is nothing cuter than watching your 14-month old dancing along with Swan Lake on the TV screen!

(Well, I do have something cuter. Sending my husband a text message asking “What’s up?” and getting back as a reply “we are now watching Swan Lake at Zoe’s request”. There’s just something really lovable about a visual of my husband sitting on the couch watching ballet with his daughter. )

Wanting to give the DVD a thorough test, I gave it to my neighbor to see if her 3 and 4 year old daughters liked it. I got it back a few days later with reports of plenty of repeat viewings!

What really struck me about this video, though, was not how much Zoe liked it. What got to me was that here was two women, like me, who had their hands full with kids and a busy life – yet they still had time to work together to visualize, create, produce, and SELL a children’s DVD. And here I am complaining that it’s hard to find time to sit down and reply to a few emails. Yes, ladies, THAT is what struck me.

I had to write to the creators, Mary Kate Mellow and Stephanie Troeller (http://www.primaprincessa.com) to find out the motive and the technicalities of their success.

Taking over one year to complete, Stephanie took her very convenient background as a ballet dancer and a cartoonist (talk about the right skills for the job!), and Mary Kate used her wits as a previously successful small business entrepreneur selling her own jewelry to Neiman Marcus, among others.

Among my curiousness of the creation process, the big question I had asked Mary Kate was how they had gotten the ballet footage. I mean, where you do even start?? Mary Kate was very quick to respond that in addition to about four-months’ work on a comprehensive business plan, they spent many hours researching via Internet and telephone. Apparently, the answer is painfully simple – you need to spend the time it takes to do some clever Google searching, and then you pick up the phone.

My next question was, when did they find the time? It took many dedicated babysitters, and many late nights after the kids were asleep.

If you are of an entrepreneurial spirit, remember that Mary Kate and Stephanie started with a need – there were no decent ballet movies for children. The other strength they had was a partnership. One of the problems I had was that I tried to be an entrepreneur by myself, while Mary Kate and Stephanie have proven that teamwork and positive energy pays off – and they have the Princess to prove it!

My hats are off to Mary Kate and Stephanie. They have proven that no matter who you are, or what you do, if you are willing to work hard, you can dream, envision, and create a product for others to enjoy.

If you want to find out more, you can visit their press page at http://www.primaprincessa.com/press.html.

]]> http://momelettes.com/2008/10/the-tale-of-prima-princessa-and-the-two-moms-who-created-her/feed/ 1 http://momelettes.com/2008/08/use-a-lyrics-search-engine-to-find-songs-you-like/ http://momelettes.com/2008/08/use-a-lyrics-search-engine-to-find-songs-you-like/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:07:18 +0000 Jess Stratton http://momelettes.com/?p=33 I LOVE music. I listen to MP3s in the car, eagerly gobble up movie soundtracks to hear a multitude of new artists and genres, and I enjoy a wide range of styles – depending on what I feel like listening to at the moment. Knowing that, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me, there’s NOTHING more frustrating than being out somewhere, hearing an amazing new song, and having no way to find out what it is.

Fortunately, there are literally hundreds of search engines containing thousands of song lyrics that you can search for by phrase or individual words.

This week’s momelette is a quickie. When you’re out and about and hear a great song, pause for a few minutes to listen to the song and pick up a very specific key phrase in the lyrics. Using your mobile phone, Jott yourself the lyrics so they are out of your mind.

Then, when you are home and in front of your computer, read the lyrics from the email that Jott sent you and do one of the following:

1. Use a Lyrics Search Engine to plug in the lyrics
Though there are many, I prefer Leo’s Lyrics (www.leoslyrics.com). I’ve yet to find a song it doesn’t know, and it’s one of the few rare gems that does not contain an endless supply of pop-up ad banners.

2. Google the word “lyrics” followed by the phrase (in quotes).
The benefit of doing it this way is you can see the Google summary of your results, which can be helpful when it comes to trying to find a cover song, as you’ll see in the screenshot below.

Now if you’re an iPhone user, things just got a whole lot easier. The web service Shazam allows you to hold your iPhone directly up to the music, and within minutes it will tell you the artist and song name. I haven’t tried it, but I’d love to hear from those that have.

Here’s to finding new music, wherever you may be. And yes, I’ve Jotted myself song lyrics to look up later from the car, a public restroom, a train station, a pub, etc. Probably the most interesting place I have ever been desperate to find a song was something that was playing as background music on an amusement park ride when I was thirteen years old. I never forgot how the song went (it had no lyrics, bah!), and one day about ten years later I heard the song while flipping radio channels in the car. I will forever thank that DJ, whoever he was, for announcing the name of the song. (It was “Fire on High” by Electric Light Orchestra)

Have you ever been desperate to find out what a song was? What measures did you take? Do you have lyrics you want others to help you find the song for?

Shazam would have been nice back then, I think.  Sigh!

But what if there was a great deal? And if it was something I really wanted? Would I bid on it then? You bet!

A long time ago, I did something I had previously never done before – I spent a LOT of money on a good quality handbag. Prior to that, I bought inexpensive purses so I could change them often with no guilt. That handbag changed my life, both good and bad.

Good: I felt better about myself with a nicer purse. I held my head a little taller, and learned to respect and to take better care of my things overall so they would last.

Bad: It SUCKS having champagne tastes, but beer money.

The easy solution is to buy on eBay instead of retail, there are some great deals to be had. The problem is, you are in a race with the rest of the world.

A quick search on eBay for “handbag” yielded great brands, but all of them had plenty of bids, and the total value was being driven up.

However, a search for “hanbag” (note the missing ‘g’) brought many great purses to choose from, with little to no bids on most of them.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I think we are on to something!

An online website, Fat Fingers – eBay typos and spelling mistakes (www.fatfingers.com) will actually do the searching for you. All you have to do is put in the correct spelling of what you are looking for, and Fat Fingers will perform an eBay search with all the possible typos that eBay auctioners could have made.

On the Fat Fingers website, put in the CORRECT spelling:

The site will bring you to eBay, where it will run a search on all possible misspellings of the auction item:

Now it’s up to you to find the least-bid on items in the search results!

Have you found any good deals this way? You can search on multiple-word items, such as coach handbag also. Play around, find the deals. Happy bidding!

• The indoor temperature
• The outdoor temperature/humidity
• What kind of layers I need to wear

It’s all thanks to my wireless weather station – a small kitchen gadget I can’t live without.

We’ve always had a basic one on the windowsill telling me the basic information, but then one day the device got hosed during a battery change operation gone awry (at least that’s what I THINK happened). Horrors, I was lost without it. I had to go outside to see what the weather was! Oh, the humanity! (In all fairness, if you live in the New England area, the weather can LOOK like it’s doing one thing, while it’s really something completely different.)

When I was shopping for a new device, I was pleasantly surprised to see how the technology had improved during the years that we had our existing weather station. I was immediately hooked on a low-cost model from La Crosse Technologies (model WS-9611U) that featured someone affectionately dubbed by all users as “Weatherboy“; a small man dressed up in the appropriate clothing for the day.

Here’s a picture, though I’ll be honest, the device was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. It currently sits on my counter near the sink, measuring in at the size of a 4×6 photo.

I’ll back up. A wireless weather station works like this:

1. There are two units; the weather station, and a wireless outdoor receiver (shown, right) that can be stashed somewhere outside.
2. When batteries are placed in each unit, they talk to each other and the weather station receives data from the outdoor receiver.
3. Once connected and the receiver is outside, it can tell you all sorts of information, such as the indoor/outdoor humidity, temperature, and upcoming weather indicators via barometric pressure (such as whether the weather will improve or get worse in the next few days).

There are many, many varieties of weather station, ranging in price as the feature list varies. You can get them at any hardware store, Home Depot, or Lowes. However, I wouldn’t buy any brand other than La Crosse Technologies. The brand is affordable, and delivers a solid product.

The WS-9611does the following (and more):

• Displays “Weatherboy” based on forecasts from barometric pressure (possible images on the right)
• Displays indoor humidity
• Displays outdoor temperature
• Displays sunrise/sunset times
• Displays current date/time
• Acts as an alarm clock
• Wall hanging or free standing

I can’t wait until Zoë is a little older, it will be a blast to teach her how to look at Weatherboy and explain what the temperatures mean and how it all works. Upon reading the Amazon.com reviews, one lady had written in to say that her mother called every morning to ask what Weatherboy was wearing that day!

Although you can buy it almost anywhere, the lowest price (as usual) comes from Amazon.com for about $30:

Voice: “Who do you want to Jott?”

Me: “Myself”.

Voice: “Got it.”

Me: “Buy a baby shower gift for Karen before next week.”

Voice: “Got it. BEEEEEP”

I hang up my phone, and about five minutes later, I can see on my phone that I have an email waiting for me from Jott. The contents of the email? Buy a baby shower gift for Karen before next week. Transcription confidence: High.

A small, innocent looking free online service called Jott (www.jott.com) has saved me from my mountain of Post-it Notes that have turned into wallaper over the years. The premise is simple:

1. Call Jott at 866-JOTT-123 (preferably put it into speed dial for maximum effectiveness).
2. Tell Jott who you are jotting, and a 30-second brain dump of what the reminder is (to do item, note, cure for cancer, etc).
3. Jott sends you a text message or email with a text transcription and audio recording.
4. You can then let go mentally of your reminder and move on to other things.

When you sign up for Jott online, your phone number is your account number, and you are given a password. You can log in to your account and change your settings, such as which email the reminders get sent to.

Here’s some more cool things you can do with Jott ™:

1. Jott to someone else

If you have friends who are already on Jott, you can add them as contacts and send Jott messages to them. In fact, my husband is on Jott, and the two of us send “To do’s” to each other regularly.

Find out more about Jotting to someone else.

2. Jott to Amazon

This is great for power shoppers. When making a big purchase, I trust the people on Amazon. It’s a fact they are brutally honest folks. If product sucks, they’ll tell you exactly why. If it’s great, they’ll all be in agreement. The problem is, I don’t carry my laptop around with me when I’m shopping, and sometimes I have a choice between two products while I’m at the store, and need to make a decision. Wouldn’t it be great if you could find out what the Amazon rating was while you were there? Now you can.

If you call Jott and Jott to “Amazon”, then tell it the product you are interested in, it will send you an email of the top 5 results, complete with pricing and customer ratings.

Find out more about Jotting to Amazon.

3. Jott a reminder

Call Jott and Jott to “Reminder”. It will walk you through setting a day and time, and then the text of your reminder. It will then send you an email and a text message 15 minutes before the event. You can also add the reminder directly from the website instead of calling.

4. Jott to a list

On the Jott website, you can create list names. It comes with the default list names of “work” and “home”. You can call Jott and Jott to your list name, and say your item. It will add it to your recurrent list. If you are the type of person who keeps your cell phone on you all the time, this is a fantastic way to keep your grocery list up to date!

There really is only one caveat I have found with Jott so far:

You need to speak clearly and in a quiet place. When I call Jott from my mobile in my car, I have to make sure the radio is off and the windows are up (even if the car isn’t moving, it still picks up ambient noise from outside!). However, that said, I am continued to be impressed by the accuracy of the transcription.

Have you found Jott yet? Are you using it as a result of this article? What other uses have you found for it? Have you done anything creative with it? Add to the recipe below and tell me about it.

An ordinary dialogue between friends used to go something like this:

Friend: “You mean you haven’t seen Firefly yet? You need to watch it immediately!”
Me: “OK, I’ll add it to my Netflix queue when I get home.”
… three months later …
Same friend: “Have you seen Firefly yet?”
Me: “Whoops, I forgot to add it to Netflix! I’ll do it when I get home.”
... repeat four time over the course of the year.

Now the conversations with the moms on my street are more like this:

Sarah: “The new Scooby Doo is out on DVD.”
JoAnn: “I know, I’ve wanted it, but it’s always checked out at the library.”
Sharon: “That was me. I had it two weeks ago.”
Karen: “You bitch! I thought that was your name in the card. You had that for DAYS! I have it now.”
JoAnn: “DVDs will be obsolete by the time I get it.”

This is where I open my purse, whip out my Treo, pull up Netflix in the mobile phone’s built-in web browser, and before Shaggy can eat his first Scooby Snack, I’ve added the DVD to my Netflix queue right there on the street.

While you’re out and about, always be on the lookout for movie trailers that sound interesting so you can add them to your queue instantly! Netflix even allows you to add movies to your queue while its still in theaters – then you can just sit back and wait for it to be released on DVD!

If you can’t access a web browser on your cell phone, you probably either don’t have a mobile phone that supports the web, or you may not have a data plan. Check with your cell phone provider, and of course make sure you know what the charges will be for visiting a website if you don’t have a data plan.

Of course, now that we are parents, our Netflix movies sit there in the living room for about a month before we get around to watching them. Yes, I could have paid for those DVDs five times over by now.

But at least my queue is impressive, and I’m not pissing anyone off at the library!