Wikipedia
Wow! is a British comic book magazine running from 5 June 1982 to 25 June 1983, when it merged with Whoopee!. Its strips included:
Wow! (styled WOW!) was an online service run by CompuServe.com in 1996 and early 1997. Started in March 1996, it was originally thought to be an improved version of CompuServe's software, but it was later announced that it would be a user-friendly stand-alone "family" online service and was widely advertised on TV as such. Wow! was the first internet service to be offered with a monthly "unlimited" rate ($17.95) and stood out because of its brightly colored, seemingly hand-drawn pages.
The first release of this program was quite buggy, with many random shutdowns of the service and loss of email messages. The service developed a small, but very loyal fan base. However, this was not enough and the service was shut down on January 31, 1997.
There is a strong group of "WOWIES" who have fought on for years after its demise, to stay connected through chat groups, and a webring. This group believes they were "sold out" by Compuserve because the service was being bought out by AOL, who began offering a $19.95 unlimited service as it was shutting down WOW.
This was not to end Wow!s troubles, several class-action lawsuits were filed, claiming that WOW! was sold to stockholders with false and misleading information.
The CompuServe model had always been to charge customers based on an hourly usage fee. This model was no longer competitive due to the new unlimited programs provided by AOL and sprouting local ISPs. In addition, CompuServe was unable to offer customized usernames. Customers had lengthy numbers with a comma (or period if it one was sending it to another non-Wow! Compuserve member) in the middle as their e-mail address. Wow! was supposed to fix those issues and make the company competitive with AOL.
The Wow! Information Service was supposed to commence with the release of Microsoft Windows 95 SR2. This version of Windows would be the first to offer a built-in Internet Explorer. Knowing that this new browser would be considered anti-competitive, Microsoft allowed the major ISPs to include their own software installations into the base Operating System. Compuserve realized that this was a huge opportunity to get Wow! on to PC's around the country, but the software was not close to being ready for distribution.
The company decided that the only way to be ready was to have a paid beta test. IT Contracting firms were consulted and beta testers were brought to Wow! Headquarters. Each beta tester would get six months of free WOW! service and be paid $100/week, plus $10 per bug they found in the software. The beta tester that found the most bugs would be awarded a "bug bounty" of $2000. In the end, the beta testers were not impressed with the payouts, and very few bugs were actually fixed.
WOW! is the fourth album released in September 1987 by Bananarama. It is entirely produced and co-written with the Stock Aitken Waterman production trio and is the last album by the girl group to generate significant chart hits in the US. Tensions between group member Siobhan Fahey and Stock, Aitken, and Waterman regarding songwriting input and lyrical content (particularly with the track "Strike it Rich") prompted Fahey's departure from Bananarama months after its release. By the time of the album's fourth single ("I Want You Back") Fahey had been replaced with Jacquie O'Sullivan (the single version of the song was re-recorded with O'Sullivan).
While the album was a moderate success in both the UK and US, it was a particularly big hit in Australia, where it topped the charts.
Fahey would resurface in 1989 with her new band Shakespear's Sister.
On 19 March 2007, Bananarama's first six studio albums originally released between 1982 and 1992 were re-issued by Rhino Records. All re-issues are remastered and each includes several bonus tracks, consisting of B-sides, single edits and remixes.
'WOW!' was re-issued in 2013 as a 3-Disc Deluxe Version and includes 'Reason For Living', which is an early version of 'I Want You Back'
Wow! is 1965 album by Bill Doggett.
WOW! was a children's entertainment magazine programme, broadcast in 1996 on the UK's ITV television network (under the CITV branding). It aired for 16 weeks from 31 August to 14 December 1996, preceded by the Summer 1996 run of Scratchy & Co. and followed by the spring 1997 run of the same show.
The presenters of WOW! were Simeon Courtie (previously of CBBC) and Sophie Aldred (a former Doctor Who star). The programme was broadcast from The Maidstone Studios in Maidstone, Kent, also home over the years to shows such as No. 73, Motormouth, and Holly & Stephen's Saturday Showdown. (On one occasion, a power issue in the studio meant that part of the episode was an outside broadcast from the studio car park.) The programme was produced by The Media Merchants in association with Meridian Television for ITV.
The show was a live, anarchic, entertainment magazine similar to Tiswas or Motormouth. It featured imported cartoons, guest interviews and music performances, games and competitions, and comedy. Comic characters featured within the show included the 'Tea Ladies' - played by male actors Peter Cocks and Woody Taylor - supposedly 'interrupting' the show to provide banter and bicker with the guests; and Syd the Spider, a puppet arachnid voiced by Phil Cornwell.
The show was dropped after a single run, and the following autumn, ITV aired the series Tricky.
WOW! was a Dutch girl group in the late nineties and early noughties who were produced by the duo Bolland & Bolland.
Former group member Joëlle van Noppen died in the Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 plane crash on 12 May 2010.