CES 2008 Hall of Shame

Romana Reynolds writes "The CES 2008 Innovations Design and Engineering Awards Showcase honored the Atom Chip Corporation, which was exhibiting the same 100GB, 500GB, and 1TB 'quantum optical' memory chips back in 2006. We actually wandered by, but long gone are the 'SolarMemory' chips, and he didn't know anything about Duke Nuk'em Forever. A little easy digging shows that they'd been making the same extraordinary claims and exhibiting prototypes at CES during the past three years, long enough to make 'atom chip hoax' the fourth suggestion on typing 'atom chip' into Google. I'm amused that the 'preeminent' panel of judges failed their vetting and gatekeeping functions. But I fear that Atom Chip will gather investors based on their recognition at CES, and continue in the game for many years to come, while honors at CES become a Hall of Shame."

Comments

Re:Corporate Image

[I8TheWorm]

It seems they've removed the following line from their page source

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">

Only more laughable is their "Stationary adapter, which is connected to the optical fiber and electrical cables" shown here

http://atomchip.com/db4/00366/atomchip.com/_uimages/256Mx61.jpg

which looks deceptively like an 1/8" stereo connector.

Re:Corporate Image

[FalconZero]

I just found my favourite part. This page has details of their "NvIOpRAM 24GB-128GB" (whatever that is), however the key to the diagram states that part 2 (as indicated several times on the diagram) is an 'optical lens' when it is quite clearly the end (and third contact) of a 3.5mm audio jack (as should be obvious to anyone who has ever used any form of personal audio).

Re:Worst Website Ever!

[Phisbut]

Can we send them the Worst Website Ever award from Slashdot?

Nope... that award still goes to the Time Cube for use of an ugly background, random font sizes and random font colors, as well as the layout (centered text in a narrow column spanning well over 25 pages), and I'm not even talking about the content of the site here...

A display on a memory chip?

[fuocoZERO]

This page suggests that the memory devices they are creating have a small display to show the free space on the chip. Wouldn't this suggest that they are making these chips filesystem aware and able to read free space? Adds to the bogus factor... not to mention the 3rd grade quality of their site...

No real surprise here.

[Telecommando]

CES is and always has been more about marketing and hype than any actual innovation.

Blocked AtomChip.com

[StickyWidget]

It's gotta be a hoax, Websense is blocking it.

Or porn. Or Liberal Propaganda. I'm just not sure these days.

~Sticky

Not just Panding! Grantid, too.

[zippthorne]

They appear to have actually achieved at least one patent. Their news page contains a link to a description of "quantum technology" Which appears to be an abstract consisting of a jumble of barely related words, a reference to an otherwise unknown "Gendlin effect." and a child's sketch of a design for magnetic core memory.

However a google patents search uncovers an actual patent! Which is basically the same, but with more child's sketches, such as one of a transistor, and a page that appears to be practice isometric drawings, and several pages of black & white photoshop cloud noise renderings.

Re:Wow...

[LynnwoodRooster]

For around $25K, you too can have your own CES Innovations award! Having exhibited my own products at CES for many years, I can tell you that you:

1. Pony up around $2,500 to "submit" your product for evaluation
2. Pony up another $5,000 when your product is chosen to be a "semi-finalist"
3. Pony up another $7,500 when your product is chosen to be a "finalist"
4. Pony up another $10,000 when you are chosen a winner, to cover "marketing expenses"
5. Profit (for CES and, presumably, you via marketing)

Inside most of the CE industries, CES Innovations awards are ignored - they mean nothing because everyone knows you can buy one. Just if you want the press or marketing exposure (so the BB/CC sales drone can move your product - it's an Award Winner!) it's worth the $$$. If you don't need it, don't pay.

That said, traffic at CES was noticeably down this year. LV wasn't as crowded, the floors were more open, and many areas - like the Venetian and Hilton - had a LOT of empty space. Lots of companies are dropping out of attending CES simply because it's gotten way too expensive to show at, and it simply has lost focus on what made it big back in the day - entertainment CE products.

Re:Corporate Image

[Hal_Porter]

And the storage devices with built-in LCD display that shows how much space they have left. I sure hope that display can interpret file systems besides FAR32 and NTFS There is a real product that does this, and I spent far too much time figuring out how to make an E Ink fuel gauge work on all know file systems -

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=417786&cid=22048494

That said if I were making a flash drive with a fuel gauge, I'd only support the FAT variant it was pre-formatted with. Anything else will lead to ruinous support costs. There's a subtle device cost issue too - if you hardwire it to only support FAT you can reduce the amount of Ram the code in the flash disk controller needs.