Q Tip
"I don't do PR - I advise on PR," says Jennifer Michalski, whose San Francisco-based PRQA (www.prqa.com) tells companies how to rein in the part of their burn rate devoted to publicity. A veteran of tech PR agency Antenna Group and former chief communications officer of innovation hothouse the Idea Factory, she's seen the dotcom boom stretch many PR firms thin. "Lots of inexperienced people are assigned to huge tasks that are beyond them," she says. Her quality assurance may take the form of advising an agency to assign senior execs to an account; other times she gets the client to set more realistic goals. Looking forward, Michalski dreams of adapting her QA model to other areas, and has registered domains for VCQA (as in venture capital) and SIQA (systems integration). "A lot of startups have to sell themselves to get services," she says, "and then no one is held accountable."
When URLs Attack
News flash: There are some things Fox won't show on television. Fortunately, the most gruesome bits of reality shows like When Animals Attack are coming soon to another small screen near you, when the network's spin-off, TooHotForFox.com, hits the Web in November. The site, produced by Peter Lebow, formerly a writer for Fox Kids Network, will stream the bloopers, high-speed chases, and animal attacks deemed too tasteless for broadcast, while encouraging users to submit their own programming. Fox's biggest shows will promote the site on the air, and Lebow plans to test wireless distribution. How hot will TooHotForFox get? "We'll push the boundaries as far as we can without going overboard," he says. "We're not going to show stuff where people get impaled."
Agent Improviseur
The suits at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the US Mint, and the United Methodist Church wanted to get in touch with their creative side. Cathy Salit had them moonwalking and talking gibberish in no time. As CEO of the 3-year-old Performance of a Lifetime (www.performanceofalifetime.com), Salit uses improv to help professionals of all kinds mainline hang-loose creativity to become more effective in their jobs. Lately, there's a new kind of client passing through her SoHo loft: employees of not-so-new tech startups. "Improv is all about the ability to innovate and be flexible," says Salit, who's worked with Razorfish, Headlight.com, and InfoRocket.com. "Dotcoms need to keep it fresh because the pressure is on."
Business Screw.0
By day, Philip Kaplan is the 25-year-old president of New York-based Web design company PK Interactive. By night, he's the dark force behind FuckedCompany.com, the "dotcom deadpool" that posts rumors about Webcos heading for the dumpster. A self-described "hardcore Ritalin kid," Kaplan is full of wacky ideas - from a fake offering of FC on eBay (which drew serious bids of more than $3 million) to a parody of the idealab! Web site that he was forced to take down after Bill Gross & Co. threatened legal action. Kaplan's latest scheme: a financial site that tracks negative events affecting dotcoms and the tech industry as a whole. "It'll be a real, serious site, for real serious people," says Kaplan, not necessarily a member of his target audience. "But it will make me a millionaire and a rock star."
MUST READ
Armageddon, the Sequel
The Cosmic Connection
Fight the Future!
Power Munch
Cat Hack Fever
The Online Gene Pool
Interface2face
People
Jargon Watch
Big Mac Attack
The First PC
Memory Hog
Insecurities Exchange
Quantum's Leap
Raw Data
