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

The "atom chip" Huh?

[AltGrendel]

Aren't they going to use that in the Phantom console?

'Quantum optical'???

[morgan_greywolf]

Quantum optical? C'mon, is it just me or doesn't that just sound like they made that up after watching a Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon on Spike?

Re:'Quantum optical'???

[operagost]

This company is clearly a hoax. Everyone knows you have to divert your quantum interconnects through the main deflector to avoid overloading the holographic matrix.

Corporate Image

[FalconZero]

Wow, with a website as slick as theirs, I wonder if they made their show posters with crayons?

Seriously though, if their intention is to promote snake oil in the hopes of attracting investors then the least they could do is put more than an hour of effort into what is pretty much (at least in this industry) the primary corporate representation.

At least they didn't create it in Word. Now that would have really irked me....

Incidentally, I did a little digging on this, and it seems its owned by a Russin Scientist called Shimon Gendlin (based out of Long Island), who as per information here in 1997 owned two companies both pitching along a simmilar theme :

• SVG Israel New Technology, Ltd. (President)
• Compu-Technics (Chairman of the board)

Re:Corporate Image

[yakumo.unr]

I particularly like the way they've photographed an SD card and GIMPed it into their 'product' but not mentioned anything about it being concept art or anything too.

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:Corporate Image

[king-manic]

PATENT PANDING, it's nto a typo. They are pandering for a patent.

Re:Corporate Image

[pete-classic]

The whole site is a lot of bullshit, but that connector isn't the best example. There is a Toslink connector that is socket-compatible with the old 3.5mm headphone jack (images).

Hybrid female connectors are common on Apple products that support both Toslink and analog audio. I've never seen a hybrid male, but it only stands to reason that someone would make one.

-Peter

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...

Re:what

[east coast]

Quick! Hire him as an editor!

Panel of Judges

[WyrdOne]

Hmm lets see, about 1/2 the Panel is made up of CEO's and Prisident/Founders of various businesses. People so far removed from the technology they work in they probably couldn't tell you how their own products actually work.

Most of the other half are made up of Salesmen, Journalists, Evangelists and Marketing agents. People who don't know the right end of a lightbulb usually.

I saw maybe 2-3 people in that whole list that *might* have a clue about how technology works.

CES needs to get a new panel of judges who know their stuff. Maybe get some leading professors in the field to come judge? How about senior product "Engineers", you know the people actually making the stuff that ends up in CES?

Mmm... Atom Chips...

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Atom chips go great with quarkamole.



Thank you, I'll be here all week! Support your bartender!

Re:No way this is real

[JMLang]

Well, the patent grab claim is unlikely. All but one of the US patents listed in the photographed flyer have been abandoned according to the US Patent office (failure to pay maintenance fees). Looks like they don't have much in the way of patent rights now, and they probably won't have much more in ten years time if they can't come up with the cash to pay maintenance fees now. Caveat Investor...

[OT] Re:Worst Website Ever!

[FalconZero]

Hahaha. Even more humorous is the link at the bottom of the page "Next Page", which should really read, "YES! Please give my brain another good kicking". Whoever wrote this page is the internet version of a crazy old guy eating out of bins, mumbling and throwing cats at people who come too close.

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...

Re:A display on a memory chip?

[poot_rootbeer]

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?

Nah, they just treat every memory cell storing a 1 as "used", and every cell storing a 0 as "free".

That calculation's much easier to do with the modest computing power of a USB stick than actual filesystem awareness would be.

Re:what

[superskippy]

The fact this has only got 25 comments several hours later means that nobody has got a clue what this story is about. This summary is made of fail.

WHOIS Record

[computer_guy57]

Their WHOIS record shows the registrant as "Domain Discreet," and their contact email as random-jumble-of-letters@domaindiscreet.com. If that doesn't scream "hoax" (kinda like everything else about them), then I don't know what does.

Re:Worst Website Ever!

[thomas.galvin]

From the Time Cube site:

This site is a collection of data for a coming book Please, let this be true.

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:Worst Website Ever!

[kalel666]

Awesome, from the website: "I HAVE CUBIC WISDOM THAT TRANSCENDS AND
CONTRADICTS ONE DAY GODS"

That is my new answer to anything my wife and/or boss asks me. Fuck it, thats my new sig, too.

Re:Worst Website Ever!

[noamsml]

Timecube: the goatse of the thinking man.

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.