Keep It to Yourself
The Rosenbergs became minor celebrities last spring when they gave Universal Music the finger. The power-pop quartet rejected an offer from Universal's online music service, Farmclub.com, that would have required them to hand over rights. Instead, the New York musicians went straight to listeners, letting Napster legally distribute their songs in exchange for promoting their live shows. This month, the band's new CD, Mission: You, is being released on an indie label, and lead singer David Fagin says he's happy he's not under the thumb of a major label. "Now we can just go out and be a band."
Dataspace Cowboy
Instead of kicking back and watching medical breakthroughs on the Discovery Channel, 84-year-old NASA veteran Herman Bank helps make them happen. A decade ago, Bank founded the Volunteer Professionals for Medical Advancement, a group of retired engineers and scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who apply their tech expertise to medicine. The group, which designed an automated oxygen-enrichment system for premature babies, is now developing a database of children's illnesses for researchers and pediatricians nationwide. Bank is waging a campaign to encourage other retired engineers to set up VPMA organizations around the country. "After 25 years of space technology," he says, "I find this much more satisfying."
Hair-Raiser
Special effects guru Joe Alter (Star Trek: TNG, Deep Space Nine; ILM, DreamWorks, Centropolis) has mastered the art of making animated objects look more like the real things. Last spring, Alter released two plug-ins for NewTek's LightWave 3D software - called Shave and a Haircut and Lip Service - that some 500 digital filmmakers have since downloaded for rendering lifelike hair and facial movements. Now Alter's offering the Shave plug-in for RenderMan, the standard tool used by Hollywood's f/x houses. "Shave gives great hair," says Steve Pugh, general manager of Foundation Imaging, which won an Emmy for its work on Star Trek: Voyager. "This kind of power used to be limited to facilities with a squadron of software developers and months to spare." The result, Alter agrees, is more than good grooming:"The professional has a full range of control without complicated setups." See for yourself at www.joealter.com.
For Swingers Only
"In the Internet of life, a party is like a packet collision," says Oliver Muoto. "And I'm a router." Specifically, he directs Silicon Valley bigwigs through his biweekly Event List, an email compendium of company parties, cocktail schmoozes, and holiday bashes. Each event gets his one- to five-star rating (five stars: the annual Hummer Winblad Christmas Party). A survivor of five startups in seven years - he's now VP of market development at Epicentric - Muoto says his biggest problem is keeping his party list exclusive. Although it's limited to his pick of 250 CEOs, financiers, biz-dev types, and journalists, hundreds of pirated copies of the list circulate widely. Turns out the list isn't the only thing in high demand; last year Women.com voted him one of the Valley's most eligible bachelors. "It's about creating value for the network," Muoto says, "and I've built a fairly good one."
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