Now the Rest of the Story, Nondisclosures Aside

By John Kelly
Tuesday, May 2, 2006

In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. But we won't be able to talk about it because we'll all have signed nondisclosure agreements.

Let me explain.

In March, I wrote about David Whiteis , a 44-year-old from Germantown who found a tiny memory chip on the floor of Los Angeles International Airport. It bore photos from a wedding, and David was able to rather ingeniously use the Web to help reunite it with its owner.

What I didn't say -- what David begged me not to reveal -- was why he was at LAX in the first place. He was on his way back from taping a reality TV show. The show was "American Inventor," the Simon Cowell -produced knockoff of "American Idol," where tinkerers demonstrate their inventions to a panel of judges in hopes of being picked for the $1 million top prize.

David had two inventions -- more on those later -- and he made the cut to fly to L.A. First he had to sign an agreement.

"It's pretty wild, this agreement," David said. "You sign away your life." The producers don't want anyone to find out ahead of time who gets cut from the pack. It's all about maintaining the suspense.

"And the penalty is basically 5 million bucks," David said. That's why he first contacted me anonymously.

In a way, I wish I weren't publishing this article today, for that would mean David was still in the running for the grand prize. Alas, David failed to wow the judges on the show that aired April 13.

On it, David presented what he calls the Capture the Moment Jewelry Gift Box (patent pending). It's a jewelry gift box of the sort that holds an engagement ring. The inside lid is equipped with a tiny video camera, like those found in cell phones.

"When you lift the lid, it begins recording for one or two minutes," David said. The camera is "looking out of the box so it catches the reaction when she sees the ring for the first time."

Cool! But, as I said, it didn't wow the judges, who on the shows I've seen seem to prefer inventions involving toilets.

David admits his pitch wasn't the greatest. He's not much of a showman. He is a real inventor, though. A computer network engineer, David patented a "similarities engine," the sort of thing that recommends other music you might like when you shop at Amazon.com. It did not make him a millionaire.

The video gift box is neat, but what David is really excited about are his bubble rings.

Bubble rings, naturally, are created by David's RingMachine, which U.S. Patent Nos. 6,488,270 and 6,736,375 describe as an "apparatus for creating vortex rings in a fluid medium."

Bubble rings are perfect circles of air that rise from the bottom of a pool, pond, fish tank or wherever you stick David's patented assemblage of nozzles, tubes and membranes.

Bubble rings serve no purpose. They don't do anything. But they are really cool to watch. (You can see them on his Web site, http://www.bubblerings.com .)

I asked David if he'd like a big infusion of cash so he could mass-market his RingMachine.

"Yes. Or just license it, just get it on the market. . . . I owe my patent lawyer so much money, I'm trying to not have new ideas these days."

One-Track Mind

There are some films I'll watch whenever they wash up on TV. "Jaws" is one. "Alien" is another. I've seen bits and pieces of them dozens of times, yet I still find it hard to take my eyes away.

That has not been the case with the two brief movies running on Metro's Red Line. I watched them a few times, but now I typically have my face in a book or magazine and am at Union Station before I realize I missed them.

I hate to say it, because Metro needs the money, but given how literate we are in the D.C. area, I wonder if tourists are the only ones who'll see the tunnel ads -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

Which brings me to a task I set a while back: for readers to name the ads. What I intended were actual titles: "Bring Me the Head of Anthony Bourdain " or "Is This a Car Commercial or a Sting Video?" What I got were neologisms -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

Alexandria's Leslie Swift-Rosenzweig offered "Distracktion." Eric Wenger of Bethesda said that ghostly advertising images projected onto Metro walls should be called "MetroSpectral." He added: "Of course, if someone ever does a historical look back on this form of advertising, it would be a MetroSpective."

Finally, Bryan from Washington summed things up nicely with this suggestion: "Tunnelvision ads."

My e-mail: kellyj@washpost.com