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Wired Releases Annual Vaporware List
alacqua writes: "Wired
has an article titled
Vaporware 2001: Empty Promises
which is a top-ten list of last year's vaporware.
'You've Got Smell!'
made it, but the Justice Department did not. Says Wired, 'Speaking of Microsoft, some smart-aleck readers opined that the most vaporous thing in tech last year was the Justice Department's failure to deliver on its promise to punish Bill Gates for his company's monopolistic misdeeds -- but we thought that a bit of a stretch.'"
Wired is spot-on in a couple of areas, but I'm afraid they missed the biggest "Vaporware" of the entire year: The antitrust "breakup" of Microsoft.
I don't know about anyone else, but that's been the most frustrating waiting game in the Industry for a long time now, IMHO.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
10. Indrema: This company cast itself as a slayer of corporate behemoths -- Indrema said it would produce an open-source game console that could beat those from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. But the available evidence suggests that, in the company's short life, all it managed to get out the door were a few sorry press releases.
"If only they would have gotten off their sorry butts and built the stupid device instead of modeling 3-D mockups and obsessing over the developer's kit," said reader Tim Toner, who had great expectations for the system, "there would already be a fanatical grassroots developer network in place big enough to scare the big guys." Those big guys did well last year in the world of games, but Indrema died a quiet death last spring.
9. Peekabooty: With governments tightening their controls on cyberspace -- purportedly to fight terrorism -- it's time we had a thing called Peekabooty, the advocates screamed. Peekabooty was to be an "anti-censorship" Web surfing tool promised early last year -- but never delivered -- by the Cult of the Dead Cow (CoDC), a group of privacy-minded hackers.
One reader said: "Everybody was freaking out because it was supposed to be released in the first days of July, but then it was delayed of a few weeks, and months later, if you go back to the CoDC website, there is still nothing about it, not even a general idea of when to expect it."
8. Artificial intelligence: Weren't we supposed to have talking, thinking, "living" computers by 2001?
There was that Spielberg movie -- but even if it was robotic, it didn't count. Jimmy St. Germain commented on the lack of "actual work" produced by Cyc, the ages-old A.I. project headed by Douglas Lenat. To be fair, Cyc is not really vapor -- some of its intelligence is in use in some network tools, for example. "But I am not a systems administrator," St. Germain said. "I just wanted to be blown away."
He raises a good point. Where are our robots?
7. Digiscents iSmell: The digital-age version of Smell-O-Vision got its media start with a cover story in Wired magazine -- "You've Got Smell!" the headline proclaimed -- but even that wasn't enough to make this quirky idea a reality.
The company's main undelivered product was called, cutely, the iSmell, which Digiscents said would have been the world's first consumer "personal scent synthesizer." You would hook up the iSmell to your computer "just like speakers," a company spokesman said last year, but instead of synthesizing the sound of an onscreen explosion, the iSmell would blow out a whiff of smoke-scented air.
There were actual working prototypes of this device, which traveled to trade shows and newsrooms to prove that, yes, smell technology did exist. But finding itself short on cash, Digiscents shut its doors last April. "I know the damn thing worked -- I had a working one on my desk," said John Hayes, one of the readers who suggested that iSmell should make the vapor list. "That's why it was so frustrating to me. In some ways the Digiscents experience will push back (the release of smell synthesizers) by a few years."
6. Silicon Film's electronic film system: Last year, Silicon Film Technologies made our list for failing to deliver its intriguing "digital film" system, which purported to turn an ordinary camera into a digital one. The digital film, one year later, is still not available, to the chagrin of many readers.
The company's website is still up and it still promises to ship its digital film when "required certifications are obtained." But the phone number doesn't seem to work any more, which led Tom Hammer, a Wired News reader, to wonder if "this was one of the great Internet hoaxes of all time."
5. 3G wireless networks: Unless you're a wealthy Tokyo businessman, you've probably heard a lot about next-generation wireless services but have never had the chance to try it. For many years, telecom companies have been saying that high-speed wireless services -- including video and audio on your cell phone -- were just around the regulatory and technical corner.
But Carlos Salvestrini wrote: "I still can't quite get a hold of a device that supports 3G mobile service, let alone a company that provides it. It appears as if there's this whole big 'mobile revolution,' but if I don't have a device to test it in, or someone who offers me the service, how can the revolution be happening?"
4. Team Fortress 2: Valve Software has been promising to release this purportedly groundbreaking multi-player game for a few years now. The company's website says that Team Fortress 2 "blends role-based action with the social camaraderie found in classic war movies," but many readers wondered whether Valve was even working on the title.
"This was one (first-person shooter) that would wander off the beaten path," Mike Parker wrote. "And it did more than that, it wandered off into the bushes, never to be found again."
3. Photoshop for OS X: Apple's new operating system for the Macintosh, Mac OS X, is a fine OS, but the company would likely be getting more plaudits for the system if Mac heads could purchase Adobe Photoshop for it.
Rumor has it that Adobe will release at least a beta version of Photoshop OS X during the next few months, but that apparently hasn't satisfied many who want to use their pretty new Macs when they play Photoshop tennis.
"Where's the beef?" Juli Maclean asked. "My suggestion: The accounting folks in Cupertino (Apple's California headquarters) should walk a mob down to San Jose and hold their pitchforks and torches at Adobe's front door, demanding that they ship a Carbonized Photoshop now so that their OS X sales will kick in from people like us -- their bread and butter."
2. Warcraft III: Nobody was more eloquent about the tardiness of Blizzard software's next offering in its popular Warcraft series than Tadhg Kelly, who seemed to take the company's actions as a personal affront.
"Never have the continuing expectations of so many been dashed by the tardiness of so few," he said.
If you check back in the Wired News archives, you'll find Kelly saying the exact same thing in last year's Vaporware piece. That's because Warcraft III was vapor, then, too. Called for comment, a Blizzard spokeswoman said the lateness was "in typical Blizzard fashion," because the company wants to make sure the software reaches the standards it is happy with.
And the winner is
The company's website says: "There is no date. We don't know any date. If you have a friend who claims they have 'inside info,' or there's some game news site, or some computer store at the mall who claims they know -- they do not. They are making it up. There is no date. Period."
That kind of talk led Holger Kleinsorgen to write, "Future generations will say 'when Duke Nukem Forever is released' when they mean 'when hell freezes over.'" And Dennis Murphy said, "This is the game I'm going to be telling my grandkids about waiting for -- and then they're going to tell me, 'Yeah, we know. So are we!'"
But 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller wasn't very upset to hear about his product getting the Vaporware top spot. "It's a very ambitious game," he said. "It's not cookie-cutter shooter like most are nowadays, and we're pushing a lot of standards. The proof will be in the pudding."
But will the pudding be here in time to avoid inclusion on next year's Vaporware list? Miller said he'd rather not answer that.
Sheesh. Google is your friend here:
Portable Network Graphics Home Site
This comes from a man that menstration is a sin.
Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today