Byline: By armand limnande section: Section mm; Column 0; T: Men's Fashion Magazine; Pg. 76 Length

1019 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 6, 2008 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

Fighting Germs and Regulators
BYLINE: By BARNABY J. FEDER
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; SMALL BUSINESS; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1278 words
With so many people worried about getting sick -- whether from the common cold and flu or exotic new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria -- Paul and Jeffrey Metzger had every reason to hope that the germ-fighting key fob they invented would be a runaway hit.

Their device, known as the Handler, began selling last year online and in stores like Duane Reade pharmacies for about $11. It features a pop-out hook so germophobes can avoid touching A.T.M. keypads, door handles and other public surfaces where undesirable microbes may lurk. As added protection, the Handler's rubber and plastic surfaces are impregnated with tiny particles of silver to kill germs that land on the device itself.

But those little silver particles have run Maker Enterprises, the Metzger brothers' partnership in Los Angeles, into a big regulatory thicket. The Metzgers belatedly realized that the Environmental Protection Agency might decide that a 1947-era law that regulates pesticides would apply to antimicrobial products like theirs.

The agency ruled last fall that the law covered Samsung's Silvercare washing machine. Samsung was told it would have to register the machine as a pesticide, a potentially costly and time-consuming process, because the company claims the silver ions generated by the washer kill bacteria in the laundry.

The Metzgers halted production of their key fob while they sought legal guidance on how to avoid a similar fate.

Their quandary highlights a challenge facing the growing number of entrepreneurs who have ventured into nanotechnology, a field that gets its name from its reliance on materials so small their dimensions are measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter.

Nanoscale materials are best known at the moment for uses like adding exceptional stain resistance to textiles, making sunscreens transparent and improving battery life. The Handler is just one of scores of products marketing the antimicrobial potency of minute quantities of silver.

The E.P.A. has so far rejected calls from environmental groups to automatically classify nanoscale forms of known materials as new chemicals under the broad toxic chemical control regulations. Nor does the agency consider size when determining what needs to be registered under its pesticide regulations. Business groups generally support such restraint but the effort to squeeze nanomaterials into existing regulations has left many companies worried about how to market their products without running afoul of the regulators.

The Metzgers ended up hiring Lawrence Culleen, one of the most experienced and expensive specialists in E.P.A. regulation in Washington, but have nonetheless had trouble determining how far they can go with their health claims.

''Everything is still on hold,'' Paul Metzger said last week. Meanwhile, the Chinese factory that makes their devices is pressuring the brothers to restart production, he said. And once the green light is given, it will be two more months before the Handler is once again widely available.

The law at issue -- the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, better known as Fifra -- was conceived in 1947 to protect humans from agri-chemicals sprayed by the millions of gallons to kill weeds, plant viruses and bugs. In the case of the Handler, the question is how the law applies to barely measurable amounts of silver -- in particles thousands of times thinner than a human hair -- that are intended to be strictly confined instead of spread into the environment.

''They don't really know how they want to register these particles,'' said Tracy Heinzman, a lawyer in Washington who deals frequently with the E.P.A. ''There's no clear path forward.''

More broadly, the limbo into which the Handler has tumbled shows how the limited resources of agencies like the E.P.A. can combine with creaky regulations to act as a brake on innovation. ''The marketplace is always ahead of the E.P.A.,'' Ms. Heinzman said.

Indeed, the tension has created a business opportunity for Agion, a supplier of ionized silver, an antimicrobial form of silver that has been registered under Fifra. Businesses willing to pay premium prices to use Agion silver can also get advice from the company on how to advertise antimicrobial abilities without making explicit health claims that may violate the law. Agion, which is based in Wakefield, Mass., says it has spent over a million dollars registering various applications of its product with the E.P.A.

''We've developed expertise in this,'' said Ginger Merritt, Agion's vice president for sales and marketing.

Some nanotechnology skeptics say that slowing commercialization is exactly what the E.P.A. ought to be doing. The silver particles provide a good example of why, in their view.

Silver's sterilizing powers were first noticed by the ancient Egyptians, but no one can be certain that long experience with the metal is a complete guide to its hazards in its newly engineered forms. Nanoscale particles -- those in the Handler average 20 nanometers in diameter -- are often unusually potent. They may also have other unexpected properties that will become apparent only if many people or other living things are exposed to significant quantities over long periods of time.

One of the biggest concerns with such particles is that they may easily penetrate the brain and other organs that larger particles cannot reach.

Moreover, some critics worry that the technology may contribute to the evolution of microbes resistant to silver poisoning. And some health experts say that constantly reducing exposure to troublesome microbes may eventually weaken the human immune system.

Environmental groups point out that pesticide regulators may simply ignore an antimicrobial product, no matter how potent, if its manufacturer and distributors avoid making health claims. As the E.P.A. interprets the regulation, a product is not ''designed'' to be a health-protecting antimicrobial -- and thus subject to registration requirements -- if it is not advertised as such.

Several other companies that have been using silver nanoparticles in ways similar to Maker Enterprises reacted to the Samsung decision by simply dropping any antibacterial claims.

Recently, for example, Domtar, a paper company based in Montreal, halted test marketing of a paper it advertised as laced with antimicrobial nanosilver particles, a product other paper makers had successfully sold to health-conscious Europeans.

E.P.A. officials deny that a review of antimicrobial claims for such products would be so burdensome and said that they have tried to develop a cooperative way of working with companies.

Samsung, for instance, was allowed to keep selling its washing machine while it develops its pesticide registration data. The agency has an ombudsman to help small businesses, said William Jordan, senior policy adviser for the Office of Pesticide Programs.

Mr. Jordan declined to discuss the Handler case but said that several companies were talking informally with the agency about registration, and how far they could go without it. ''We try to use common sense in dealing with smaller companies,'' he said.

The agency said its handling of earlier antimicrobial products, especially the synthetic disinfectant triclosan, provided a model for nanosilver. Companies that had rushed to market with products as diverse as toys and toothbrushes impregnated with triclosan -- also known as Microban -- ended up paying fines and changing their labels. Mr. Jones said that many triclosan products have since been registered under the pesticide law, some with reviews as short as 60 days.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MAJOR APPLIANCE MFG (90%); BACTERIA (90%); NANOTECHNOLOGY (89%); PESTICIDES (89%); ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE (89%); PESTICIDE REGULATION (88%); CHEMICALS REGULATION & POLICY (88%); ANTIBIOTICS (78%); INFLUENZA (78%); ENVIRONMENTAL & WILDLIFE ORGANIZATIONS (75%); TOXIC & HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES (74%); ENVIRONMENTAL DEPARTMENTS (73%); SKIN CARE PRODUCTS (72%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (68%)
COMPANY: SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD (55%)
ORGANIZATION: ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (56%)
TICKER: SMSN (LSE) (55%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS334310 AUDIO AND VIDEO EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING (55%); NAICS334112 COMPUTER STORAGE DEVICE MANUFACTURING (55%); SIC3663 RADIO & TELEVISION BROADCASTING & COMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT (55%); SIC3651 HOUSEHOLD AUDIO & VIDEO EQUIPMENT (55%); SIC3572 COMPUTER STORAGE DEVICES (55%); NAICS334310 AUDIO & VIDEO EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING (55%); NAICS334220 RADIO & TELEVISION BROADCASTING & WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING (55%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (76%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 6, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOs: Paul Metzger with the Handler, a device meant to help avoid contact with germs. Its use of silver particles poses a problem. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY J. EMILIO FLORES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1020 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 6, 2008 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

Boldface in Cyberspace: It's a Woman's Domain
BYLINE: By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
SECTION: Section G; Column 0; Style Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1458 words
IT was another season of fashion runway shows and a group of friends, chatting about the revival of Halston, were reminiscing about their personal encounters with the designer. Candice Bergen shared how he had lent her a white mink bunny mask and strapless gown for Truman Capote's 1966 Black and White Ball. Liz Smith spoke of how cocaine had destroyed the man during the disco era. Joni Evans admitted to attending a party and gushing to ''Calvin Klein'' about how she adored his designs, only to realize that she was gushing to Halston.

Their conversation might have taken place over lunch at Le Cirque. Only this was a virtual Le Cirque: the memories spilled forth not from lipstick-ringed mouths, but from BlackBerrys, iPhones and laptops before being posted on wowowow.com, a new Web site aimed at women 40 and older.

The site's five founders, also women of a certain age, are longtime friends and media live-wires: Ms. Evans, formerly the president of Simon & Schuster and an ex-publisher at Random House; Ms. Smith, the gossip columnist; Mary Wells, the advertising executive behind memorable campaigns like ''I Love New York''; Peggy Noonan, the political columnist and former presidential speechwriter; and Lesley Stahl, the television news reporter. In addition, the founders have signed up some boldface friends to contribute to the site, including Ms. Bergen, Joan Juliet Buck, Whoopi Goldberg, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tomlin, Joan Cooney, Judith Martin, Sheila Nevins, Julia Reed and Jane Wagner. Wowowow, which is to make its debut Saturday, was but a pixel of an idea a year ago. Ms. Evans was struck by what she considered a dearth of online content provocative enough to hook sharp, driven women like herself. Weary of shopping and travel sites, she reached out to a klatch of women friends who are as blond as Jayne Mansfield and better connected than the most determined Facebook users. Turns out, they were game for shaking up the digital status quo, even though most were cyberneophytes. Web culture, from the technicalities of uploading content to the verbal nakedness that is blogging, was unfamiliar. Even acquiring a domain name was, as Ms. Smith put it at a gathering of some of the founders the other day, an uphill battle.

''I wanted to call the site AllTheGoodNamesAreTaken.com,'' she said. (Actually, she wanted to call it Hot Voodoo, after the Marlene Dietrich song, but the other women shot it down.)

Ms. Stahl suggested adopting a name that incorporated the word ''broad,'' like broad-minded, but there were objections to that too.

''I went through a period where I really thought 'After all we have done in our lives and accomplished -- to call ourselves broads?' '' said Ms. Wells, the founder of the advertising and marketing agency Wells Rich Greene.

Somewhere Ms. Evans has a long list of thumbs-down domain names (i.e., HerTube.com). ''I remember how innocent we were,'' she said. The name they settled on is a play on ''Women on the Web.''

''We actually bought out a porn site to get this name,'' Ms. Evans said. (Technically, they didn't buy a porn business, just womenontheweb.com.) Now, ''when anyone looks for that porn site, they're directed to us,'' said Ms. Evans, who became chief executive of the site after retiring last year as a senior vice president at the William Morris Agency's literary department.

The fare on the new PG-13 Wowowow is in some ways no different than that of other women-focused community Web sites like iVillage: horoscopes and posts about love and marriage, health and fashion. Wowowow also has political commentary, but what is particularly distinctive are the conversations, like the Halston dialogue, which read like deeper and more intimate versions of the ''hot topics'' segment of the television gabfest ''The View.''

''It was very loose and fun and intimate,'' Ms. Bergen said of participating in the discussions, which the women have practiced while the site is in beta mode. The cozy tone of the exchanges, the participants say, reflects their decades-long overlapping friendships, stretching back to the 1960s and 70s when many were among the first women pioneering their media and entertainment fields.

''It's like when I used to live in a women's dormitory 50 years ago,'' said Ms. Martin, a.k.a. the advice columnist Miss Manners.

Going up against thriving well-established destinations like iVillage or More will be no small task. Wowowow's chief appeal may be the glimpse it promises into the personal lives and beliefs of a group of businesswomen who broke through glass ceilings. The site fundamentally trades on their celebrity and sophistication. ''IVillage has always puzzled me,'' said Ms. Buck, a contributing editor to Vogue and a consulting editor to Wowowow. ''I love the idea but it's like Macy's or something.''

The group conversations posted on Wowowow are conducted over the telephone, transcribed and edited. The ''question of the day'' portion of the site is the result of the women sending e-mail responses to questions funneled through Ms. Buck about everything from envy to female presidential candidates. ''As soon as we finish one batch they have another,'' said Ms. Wagner, the playwright perhaps best known for ''The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.''

The women also contribute their own blog posts or musings whenever the mood strikes. Most send e-mail messages although Ms. Smith has been known to call in or fax her contributions. ''Well, I still write with a feather you know,'' she said.

Wowowow also hopes to be shaped by readers, who can post comments if they register. The ''Intuitive'' who writes the horoscopes will take daily questions. There are plans for a philanthropic section of the site and a social networking component where readers can create personal home pages and interact with one another.

Statistics show there is a market for such a site. A comScore Media Metrix study of the growth in visitors among the top 100 United States Internet properties found that women's community sites were, along with political sites, the top gaining Internet category last year. Unique visitors to women's community sites reached nearly 70 million in December 2007, a gain of 35 percent over December 2006. Glam Media and iVillage, the reigning properties in this category, both benefited from the increased traffic.

The start-up investment in Wowowow is $1 million; the five founders, who are equal partners, backed it with their own money. They have also secured some advertisers, Tiffany, Citi and Sony, and hired five full-time employees who, as Ms. Buck put it, ''speak cyber.''

Still, Ms. Evans and company are not necessarily an Internet dream team. They may be coming a bit late to the party. And they have large public personas, which may make it challenging for them to be uninhibited enough to lure readers accustomed to bloggers who never censor themselves.

''In that way, it's a little bit hard on me,'' said Ms. Cooney, who co-founded ''Sesame Street'' and is now the chairwoman of the executive committee of Sesame Workshop. ''I'm very private even though I've been written about because of 'Sesame Street.' I still am not used to talking about myself.''

The medium is alluring to her and other Wowowow writers, they say, because it offers a respite from their more structured assignments. Even so, why migrate to cyberspace after long, successful and lucrative careers in other fields?

''It is a young world on that Web, and it's time that a mature or seasoned or empowered generation had a strong presence,'' Ms. Evans said, ''and not one about finding a man or about matchmaking or about taking care of your daughter.''

Ms. Evans, 65, feels as if she and her friends have been in training for this enterprise their entire careers, from the contacts they have amassed to their various skill sets. Though she has been a top executive of publishing companies, she has never been an owner. Both she and Ms. Stahl, a correspondent on CBS's ''60 Minutes,'' say they derive satisfaction from being entrepreneurs and working with other women. Ms. Stahl said she was also drawn to the project because the Web is still ''the future.'' Ms. Smith, on the other hand, sees the site as her ''encore'' after decades as a syndicated gossip columnist.

For some of the women, Wowowow is about more than a new business venture; it's about speaking their minds.

''Women who are not kids, who are not in their 20s, we've been the object of more suppression over these decades,'' said Ms. Tomlin, the actress and comedian. ''I think it could be incredibly liberating on a lot of levels,'' she said, referring to the site. ''If not for anyone else, then for us.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: FASHION DESIGNERS (90%); FASHION & APPAREL (90%); WOMEN'S MARKET (73%); DOMAIN NAMES (73%); BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (73%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (74%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING AGENCIES (72%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING SERVICES (71%); COCAINE (71%); WEB SITES (68%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (67%); WRITERS & WRITING (65%); ADVICE COLUMNS (50%); PUBLISHING (72%); MOBILE & CELLULAR TELEPHONES (69%); HANDHELD COMPUTERS (69%); FASHION SHOWS (90%)
COMPANY: SIMON & SCHUSTER INC (55%); FACEBOOK INC (53%)
LOAD-DATE: March 6, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: A DIFFERENT FACEBOOK: From left, Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Mary Wells and Joni Evans, four founders of wowowow.com. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE FORNABAIO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg.G1)

AND SOME CONTRIBUTORS ARE: Lily Tomlin, left, Jane Wagner and Candice Bergen are among the list of luminaries who will add their two or more cents to the new Web venture, which is scheduled to open for business on Saturday. (PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRY BENSON) (pg.G6)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

1021 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 6, 2008 Thursday

Late Edition - Final

Social Networking Moves to the Cellphone
BYLINE: By VICTORIA SHANNON
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 672 words
DATELINE: PARIS
Social networks may be nothing new to habitues of the Internet. Several years of competition among Facebook, MySpace and Friendster have generated tens of millions of members.

But now the market is teeming with companies that want to bring the same phenomenon to the cellphone. There are so many ''mobile social networking'' upstarts, in fact, that when New Media Age magazine in Britain tried to identify the ''ones to watch,'' it ended up naming 10 companies.

Some of those in the thick of battle are resigned to having a lot of company. ''If there weren't competitors, there wouldn't be a market,'' said Dan Harple, founder and chief executive of GyPSii, a mobile social network based in Amsterdam that is a contender. ''Maybe there are 30 or more now -- in three years, there will be 5 that matter.''

The prize, as these start-ups see it, is the 3.3 billion cellphone subscribers, a number that far surpasses the total of Internet users. The advantage over computer-based communities, they believe, is the ability to know where a cellphone is, thanks to global positioning satellites and related technologies.

The market research company Informa Telecoms said in a report last month that about 50 million people, or about 2.3 percent of all mobile users, already use the cellphone for social networking, from chat services to multimedia sharing. The company forecast that the penetration rate would mushroom to at least 12.5 percent in five years.

Most mobile social networks seek to capitalize on location information. The SpaceMe service from GyPSii, for instance, will show users where friends and other members are in real time.

A GyPSii search will show users a map of their environs dotted with photos, videos and information from other members.

Bliin, another network that started in Amsterdam, lets users update and post their whereabouts every 15 seconds.

But for other networks, geography and ''presence'' information is not as critical. MyGamma, a social network run by BuzzCity, based in Singapore, draws most of its 2.5 million users from developing countries in Asia and Africa, its chief executive, Lai Kok Fung, said.

''These are countries with low Internet penetration -- they are not PC-centric,'' Mr. Lai said. ''For our members, the mobile phone is the only way to get on the Internet.''

For that reason, Mr. Lai is not overly concerned with the big Internet names -- like MySpace and Facebook -- and their plans to invade the cellphone universe.

AOL, Yahoo and Nokia have initiatives to create discrete communities out of cellphone users.

''We don't think any of them will make a big splash in the mobile space,'' Mr. Lai said. ''They view mobile as an extension of the online site, while we know our members use mobile much differently.''

According to a BuzzCity study, members usually gain access to the mobile social network from home or work, and they use their cellphones first, even if they can get to the network from a personal computer. For most users -- 62 percent -- each myGamma session lasts 30 minutes to an hour.

Itsmy.com, a social network run by the Munich-based GoFresh, also exists only in the mobile world. Itsmy, which says it has more than a million registered users, opened its Italian-language service on Wednesday. It was already available in English, German and Spanish, and a Japanese version is planned.

GyPSii announced a version of its software for the AppleiPhone this week, and last month it concluded a contract with China Unicom to start GyPSii during the Beijing Olympics.

Mr. Harple, an American technology entrepreneur, does not consider it unusual that so many mobile social networks originate outside the United States, which has dominated the Internet business.

''I moved to Europe because I thought the U.S. venture capital community -- which I was a part of -- was myopic,'' he said. ''They can't see the global significance of what is happening.''

Mr. Harple predicted GyPSii ''could have more users in one year than Facebook had in three.''

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