Can't Spell? No Prob

Imagine this. Your business is about good health. Its name is even a play on the German word for good health. Everyone knows that word, but no one can spell it. And if people can't spell it, they can't find your site. So how are you going to help them, not to mention help yourself?

If you're gazoontite.com, you go find a bunch of kids to misspell your name every way they can think of, then register their guesses as Web addresses. The San Francisco-based allergy-and-asthma products site sent marketers to Xtreme sports meets to ask 15-year-old skateboarders and bicycle acrobats how they would spell the well-known surrogate for ''God bless you.'' A sampling of the kids' contributions: gazoontight, guzuntite, and kazuntite. Their dot-com versions all belong to gazoontite now. To be safe, the company bought sneeze.com too. Now even semiliterate allergy sufferers can be whisked to the site. ''We do get a lot of e-mails from people saying, 'I didn't know that was how you spell it,''' says Allison Wing, gazoontite's vice-president of business development.

Actually, it's not. In fact, the real spelling is about the only one Wing's company doesn't control. The German Ministry of Health has rights to that name and won't give gazoontite.com a license. By the way, it's gesundheit.

By Ira Sager

Oh, What a Lovely Computer

The fashion business lived and died by buzz long before dot.coms. But one Southern California-based startup is ripping even more pages from Seventh Avenue's playbook. InfoCharms Inc., a developer of wearable computers, is using fashion shows to do more than show off protoypes. Instead, they're paying for the company's launch.

The $700,000 InfoCharms has made from putting on shows in Hong Kong and New York will help pay for production of its first product, a palm-sized badge worn on a shirt that lets people swap electronic business cards by standing in front of one another. Coming soon: badges that alert wearers when they have key voice mail and e-mail. Stylish tunics and jewelry that link to the Web are planned for later on. "Most wearable computers make you look like a geek," says CEO Alex Lightman. "We're only interested in things that make you look chic."

By Paul C. Judge

This Geek for Hire

Think a rival's technology might put a cement overcoat on your profits? You need a digital detective--someone to search patents and pore through journals. IBM research veteran Roger Dube is one such high-tech gumshoe. ''Before Roger, we did a lot of this work ourselves,'' says Jerry Kochanny, research director of technology transfer at Kimberly-Clark Corp.

A Dube cyber-stakeout starts with digging into a 25,000-publication database at Gate Technology, his 12-person firm in Boca Raton, Fla. ''He's a geek with street smarts,'' says Jon Morgenstern, president of client E-Money Inc. For Kimberly-Clark, Dube sniffed out advances in diaper materials. Tambrands hired him to help them sew tampons faster.

Sam Spade might turn up his nose at Dube's work, but he was no geek, just street smart. These days it takes both.

By David Rocks

The NBA's Full Mouse Press

Everyone knows what wins basketball games: Shaquille O'Neal's power, Scottie Pippen's grace, Michael Jordan's skill and will. Certainly the Web can't help--but wait, it can.

The National Basketball Assn. is into data mining. Most people know it as the method marketers use to plumb consumer behavior, but coaches use it to decide: Should I play big guys or fast guys? Most teams use IBM software called Advanced Scout, which crunches up-to-the-minute stats the league began providing over the Web this season. ''These are the kinds of things you could only use your gut for before,'' Minnesota Timberwolves scout Trey Schwab says. ''Now you have numbers.''

Better information yields better decisions. One example: In last year's playoff series against the Houston Rockets, the Los Angeles Lakers shifted playing time to backup Robert Horry from starter Rick Fox. Advanced Scout showed the Lakers had outscored the Rockets by 11 points during the regular season with Horry and forward Glen Rice playing together. When Rice and Fox played, Houston had topped LA by 11. The Lakers won the series, but San Antonio won the NBA title. That figures: Spurs star David Robinson is a computer nut.

By Ronald Grover

Playing for Stock

After seeing the score William Shatner made endorsing priceline.com in exchange for stock, hipsters are boldly going where Captain Kirk went before.

William Morris Agency Inc. has set up an entire division to match stars with new-media companies. The average rate: $1 million in cash and stock, which can multiply when the company goes public, says Flooz.com CEO Robert Levitan. ''They need brands in a hurry, and our clients are brands,'' says William Morris agent Lisa Shotland. Alanis Morrissette has one of the sweetest deals: She and her managers have about $26 million in MP3.com stock. Whoopi Goldberg is the face and a strategic adviser for gift-certificate seller Flooz.com. Cindy Crawford has a deal with online baby and maternity clothier eStyle. Christy Turlington, Ice-T, Tori Amos, and Jason Alexander hold Internet paper, too. If a startup flops, no bonanza, but that's a risk worth taking. ''Everyone wants to be involved in the Web,'' Crawford says. ''People are making so much money.''

By Kathleen Morris

Speeding on the I-Way

They shuffle in and sit like zombies, the doomed, the undead. At classes, speeders and red-light runners slouch. They slurp sludgy coffee, struggling to stay awake as retired cops drill them on traffic safety.

Now the doomed have an alternative to bad drivers' school on the Web. In California, where cars and computers are twin secular religions, at least a dozen Web sites offer help. Companies such as Ticketerasers.com and TrafficSchoolOnline.com charge $19.95 for text, videos, and the final exam. But it's not totally virtual: Schools must verify that the offender takes the final. TrafficSchoolOnline made a deal with Kinko's, where students take the test amid the roar of the Xerox and the smell of the toner.

What say the formerly undead? ''I can't imagine ever attending a traditional traffic school again,'' says Daniel Alexander of Lucerne Valley, Calif. Then ease up on the gas and floor that mouse.

By Joan O'C. Hamilton