Ultima Offline
In the 1970s, Ralph Nader dubbed consumer advocate George Schultz "the Ralph Nader of the meat industry." Schultz earned this praise by exposing mob influence in the flesh trade. Now he's sinking his hooks into Electronic Arts and Origin Entertainment, whom he accuses of online-gaming fraud. In a suit to be heard next month in San Diego County Superior Court, he alleges that the firms willfully ignored server problems and levied undisclosed charges. A self-tagged "hard-core gamer" who has a four-PC network at home, Schultz reasons that "the sons of bitches should deliver on what they promise." EA and Origin dismiss the suit as frivolous.
Screenager
As a teen, Chris Cunningham read Neuromancer - three times. Soon he could imagine every scene of a Neuromancer movie and started working on storyboards. Years later, the twentysomething prodigy (he worked with Stanley Kubrick as a youth) will bring William Gibson's classic to the screen, when Seven Arts releases the pic next year. The British director - known for his f/x work in music videos and films like Alien 3 - shies away from hyping the movie while it's in development. But Gibson isn't so demure: "The guy's a genius," says the author. "He's the man for the job - Neuromancer was his Wind in the Willows."
Immaterial Guy
After BSO/Origin founder Eckart Wintzen masterminded a merger with Philips C&P, he could've retired to his bucolic Dutch castle. Instead, he went global with his do-good holding company Ex'tent, which has invested in a car co-op, an AIDS research venture, the European Ben & Jerry's franchise, and 10 other outfits. This January, the Dutch tycoon added the SFBay Area's Ex'pression Center for New Media to his portfolio. Wintzen says the school aims for social virtue and vocational education: "People who spend time in front of a screen are not burning gasoline. Flying electrons represent a less material economy."
Neo-Magaziner
As an undergraduate, Elliot Maxwell worked with Ira Magaziner to develop Brown University's progressive New Curriculum - an experiment that has since become an Ivy League standard. Now, almost 30 years later, the US Commerce Department has tapped Maxwell to take on the tech policymaking role that Magaziner vacated in December. As Commerce's special adviser for the digital economy, he'll tackle issues ranging from online privacy to ecommerce treaties. Maxwell's vision for the job: "I want to mirror the way the Net works - to synthesize an enormous amount of talent and put it to work."
Business Model
You'd think that Angela Kapp - self-portrait: "a geek in lipstick-chick clothing" - would be hyping the Net after ringing up major online sales last year. But Estée Lauder Companies' VP of special markets and new media is still trying to figure out whether online skin-typing makes cents. "We're a $3.7 billion company, and we're not going to go hog-wild over $30 million in online sales," she says. OK, but that rivulet of cash was enough to convince her bosses to give ecommerce a go. With Web sites for two of Lauder's major brands completed and 350,000 registered users online, Kapp is looking for a killer cosmetics app. But don't expect anything too far out: "Let's face it, we're pretty mainstream. It's not like we're developing a new Internet protocol here."
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