Web-site makers get whiff of fame

MEDFORD, Ore. - Two Oregon men have created a cyberstink with a Web site that painstakingly tracks the decomposition of raw meat in public places with photographs and descriptive prose.

Mahlon Smith and Chad Sobotka launched their first "Stinky meat" Web page to document the decay of steak, ground beef and hot dogs hidden in a neighbor's back yard. The first day, the Web site got 60,000 hits. Now, the total is somewhere at 3 million. Encouraged, they created "Stinkymeat 2."

Now, Smith and Sobotka have become icons, generating a Web-site genre called "cyberstench" and spinoffs in Australia and the United Kingdom. A Massachusetts-based computer firm bought the rights to host the first two Stinkymeats.

"I'm not really sure what the appeal is," said Smith, 23, of Medford. "It doesn't get much more immature."

Indeed. A visit to Stinkymeat host www.thespark.com takes cybersurfers through the original Stinkymeat - "19 days of neighbor-torment via odor and rot." On the first day, Smith and Sobotka priced and bought the meat at a grocery. By Day 12, it was "organic muck" and later became infested with maggots.