Strangely, it seems that two companies have learned the "prepare the server" rule that I spoke about recently. I'd link to my other entry on the same subject, but it's not posted yet so there's no way to link to it.
However, suffice to say that Radio Rickshaw had a receent server meltdown after putting forth a press released. Embarassing. Marketing Sherpa apparently just had some of the same type of problem.
Marketing Sherpa announced earlier this week their blog and podcasting awards. Unfortunatley, the service they were using for the survey could not handle the traffic. The landing page for voting says they have recorded all the votes to-date, but any new votes must use a different url. The new survey is being handled by Survey Monkey.
Ouch.
I'll just say it again: put server prep on your list of things to look at before doing any major PR stuff.