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$500k "Energy-Harvesting" Kickstarter Scam Unfolding Right Now
New submitter FryingLizard (512858) writes For a while I've been following the saga of the Kickstarter "iFind" Bluetooth 4.0 tracking tag. Nothing new about such tags (there are many crowdfunded examples; some have delivered, some have disappointed), but this one claims it doesn't require any batteries — it harvests its energy from electromagnetic emissions (wifi, cell towers, TV signals, etc). The creators have posted no evidence other than some slick Photoshop work, an obviously faked video, some easily disproven data, and classic bad science. So far they've picked up half a million in pledges. With six days to go until they walk off with the money, skeptics abound (10min in) including some excellent dissections of their claims. The creators have yet to post even a single photo of the magical device, instead posting empty platitudes and claims that such secrecy is necessary to protect their IP.
Using just their published figures, their claims are readily refuted, yet still backers flock in. Kickstarter appear uninterested in what can only be described as a slow-motion bank robbery, despite their basic requirement to demonstrate a prototype. It seems self-evident that such scams should not be allowed to propagate on Kickstarter, for the good of other genuine projects and the community at large. Skeptics are maintaining a Google Doc with many of the highlights of the action. Bring your own popcorn and enjoy the show."
Using just their published figures, their claims are readily refuted, yet still backers flock in. Kickstarter appear uninterested in what can only be described as a slow-motion bank robbery, despite their basic requirement to demonstrate a prototype. It seems self-evident that such scams should not be allowed to propagate on Kickstarter, for the good of other genuine projects and the community at large. Skeptics are maintaining a Google Doc with many of the highlights of the action. Bring your own popcorn and enjoy the show."
I pledged $120.
Everybody knows that green tech works without regard to laws of physics. Give them your money, they are green! They know how to make magic work!
http://abc.cs.washington.edu/
...so only scan read the article, but that sounds great. I've just pledged $100. Looking forward to it arriving.
Calling it iFind ... they will need all the money they can get for the Apple suite
I swear I remember a period of a few weeks where I'd see ads for this product on slashdot...
Game over for Kickstarter. This will bite them hard...
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
This is why there is zero oversight from Kickstarter/Amazon - they get their 20% cut if the projects gets funded. There's no way Amazon.com is going to walk away from $125,000 in free money when they have absolutely no risk.
(We've heard this song before - from ISPs back in the day who claimed they were "common carriers" and "only providing a network" to avoid being charged as accessories to piracy).
They'll take their 125k, and if questioned, simply state they were providing a platform, and that they are not responsible for what users do with it.
Surely, though, they must have registered the "iFind" trademark? And if you search on TESS we find:
Owner (APPLICANT) WeTag, Inc. CORPORATION TEXAS 3309 San Mateo Drive Plano TEXAS 75023
With an attorney listed as "Richard G. Eldredge" which corresponds to a local attorney. Before you deploy the door kickers to lynch somebody, that address is just somebody's $200,000 house and could possibly be a random address used by a jerk. Remember that it's entirely possible that this is all a front by some other actor and someone was paid western union/bitcoin to register this trademark through this attorney without realizing they were just being used by literally anyone in the world ... of course, kickstarter should have even better transaction details (hopefully).
My work here is dung.
If they allow projects to float their rules,and yet still take pledges?
There's a lawsuit waiting to happen here, it could be as lucrative as posting a dodgy kickstarter campaign!
hmm..
1. post obviously crap kickstarter
2. pledge yourself
3. complain vigorously when you "lose" your money
4. start a class-action suit against kickstarter for not checking things out
5. profit!!!
no need for ??? on this one!
What's the big deal? No secret sauce, it's an RFID tag, NFC, there are quite a number of them out there now, big deal.
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... also was a scam, purportedly concentrating diffuse radiation.
Ok so they have a patent pending, or claim to have it. Can't we look it up through the patent office?
I'd rather crowdfund a Star Trek movie - at least there are some nice ones already made that way.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
This is like the solar roadways on Indiegogo. (2.2 million dollar scam)
They start with 100k, spend a few days on presentations, make a marketing splash and start donating their own money to give credibility to their scam. "Look, loads of people are investing, surely they're not idiots."
Too many people in the world with far too much money to burn, and, no common sense.
To begin with, iFind tag doesn’t have a battery. Instead, it uses our patent pending EM Harvesting technology and stores the energy in a uniquely designed power bank
I smell BS. Unless, these guys have invented a new power source system unknown to NASA/Goverment and billion dollar tech companies? Yep, bullshit.
Ha ha h a h a h a h a h a h a a h !! Next they'll be trading in the Airs for a Surface !!
A fool and his money are soon parted
Man, this is good to see, here is another one to hit up,
It claims to allow you to receive and create an auditable sound of most AM broadcasts
It openly states no battery or power source is needed other then the ambient radio signals.. total bull shit obvisouly
Please for the love of god ppl, get a clue, free energy claims are 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999% likely BS, but read what is being written, no 'free energy' here, just the claim of converting energy.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
pseudo-intellectuals (read hipsters) who think kickstarter is gods way of communicating ideas with the world...
Just floating an idea.
Give Kickstarter a break, they're very busy protecting us from conservatives.
No brain, no pain.
From Snake Oil in the Old West to weight loss scams, baldness fixes, male vitality enhancers, or Breatharians, the easiest thing to sell is false hope since it tricks the buy into thinking about only what they want, not what is actually possible.
And so ends what was once a good way for ideas to find funding. Trust some asshole to come in and fuck it up for everyone.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Strange thing is, I see free energy or alternative physics projects pop up on Kickstarter now and then, and usually they are shut down pretty quickly. I am curious why this one was allowed to continue when normally they are pretty good about not allowing them.
What about that kickstarter for a solar roadway? That sounds like total BS too.
If (when) they just take the money and run, are they legally in the clear? If so, I think I'm about to switch careers...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Actually, according to Zillow, the house was rented for $1,250 in May 2013. It isn't even an owner-occupied house.
I recall a scam project around this time last year for Kobe beef jerky that just got suspended shortly before the campaign ends. I wonder if Kickstarter will do the same at the last minute.
And no, they cannot do what they claim. It is possible to build locators like they describe, but they would need to be passive. There is just no way to harvest and store enough in something this small. RFID tags derive all their energy from the sender that queries them, and with good antennas you can go up to, say 30m with them. But that is the limit these days and it is for a passive device that has its energy specifically and targeted beamed to it by the sender. For a harvesting device, you get very low power radio, almost no computing power and a few meters in reach and that is with a specialized receiver, not a general-purpose cell-phone.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
A long time ago a farmer discovered that the bailing wire he was using to tie his rickety silo together was electrified by the RF from the overhead power lines. Not wanting to let a good thing go to waste, the improved the hookup and started drawing power. When the power company found out, they sued... and won. Therefore, legal precedence has been established that you cannot siphon off power without permission of the producer of that power.
to keep track of things like your wallet and keys by habitually keeping them in a single place, you probably shouldn't be walking around with either anyway. You should probably be holding a real adult's hand when you cross streets, too. Using technology to enable people to continue to be dopes is not a good idea.
I can see where this would have value for people with dementia. If would help caregivers locate personal items that may be needed.
When I think about how many airheads are walking around, I can't help but think that if it works the project will make phat stax. I wonder if their target market will be able to find their credit cards to place an order...
Videogame kickstarters have (from experience) more false claims than any other Kickstarter type I've ever seen. For instance, there was one that Retsupurae covered on Youtube yesterday, where a person claiming to be a "former Square-Enix employee" was trying to get people to crowdfund a remake of Chrono Trigger... made entirely in RPG Maker. Apart from the fact that said "former employee" didn't have the rights to Chrono Trigger, it was pretty clear that he had never actually coded anything before. In comparison, there have been several groups attempting to remake the game, all of whom were doing it for free. They were all sent C&D letters and stopped - but this guy didn't have to because his Kickstarter came nowhere close to getting funded.
There was also the guy who tried to make a 3D version of Monster Girl Quest. Compared to the Chrono Trigger guy he was a little better off rights-wise: he didn't own the rights to the real Monster Girl Quest, which hadn't even released its third and final installment when the Kickstarter went up, but MGQ wasn't registered in the United States yet and was only purchaseable through Japanese websites. The developer of MGQ is small enough that I don't think they would have the resources to sue, but they didn't have to - the guy didn't make funding, which was probably for the best, seeing as he featured his family (including his son, who was like five years old when he made the Kickstarter) in a pitch video for a "clean" version of an h-game.
If Kickstarter can't catch basic things like these, where they're clearly an infringement of copyright that could be discovered in a matter of seconds (both of the Kickstarters I mentioned had the names of the games they were stealing from clearly listed in their summaries) there's no way they're going to catch bad science.
They do not have the antenna and storage for what they claim they can do. There are limits what you can capture in something this small and they are rather low. and way below what Bluetooth needs.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Doesn't make sense that despite the evidence against them, people would continuing pledging funds.
Seems like an attempt to clean a few thousand stolen credit cards.
Before the witch hunt begins, someone should kindly ask this guy, one of the listed affiliates:
http://www.ifp.illinois.edu/~zwang119/
whether he knowingly has his name on this project. From the looks of his research, he does nothing with hardware. And so someone may have just listed him.
If it actually is him, this can be roped in really fast by either contacting his academic advisor and if necessary, the chair of the department or a Dean. This would create such horrible publicity for U. Illinois that action should be swift and decisive.
Look, if people really doubt the science (and I do: wireless electromagnetic power transission is really only a near field phenomena because those contributions to the E and B fields that can drive currents usefully drop much harder than 1/r).
Now go and be nice, he's probably a victim too.
US Patent 6788199
A classic example- old people in assisted living facilities frequently misplace their dentures (i know, what the hell?). They often take them out to eat (if they don't fit properly), wrap them in a napkin and leave them sitting on a table. The napkin containing the denture gets scooped into the trash with food waste and the denture has mysteriously disappeared. If WeTag's stuff works and the tag circuits could be embedded in dentures it would be great!
http://www.google.com/patents/US6788199
22. The system of claim 1, wherein the transceiver module is powered by radio frequency energy.
Inventors Timothy L. Crabtree, Reza P. Rassool, Michael F. Wells, Gregory J. DelMain, Peter White, Paul McArthur
Many projects funded by crowd-sourcing will fail due to corruption, incompetence, and plain old bad luck. Folks contributing to a poor bet are probably not sacrificing their rent money.
Oh, and every once in a blue moon, a genius is ridiculed by smart people.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'll use it in my car, which gets 100 MPG due to the fuel line magnets. Too bad I can't afford the conversion kit so it can run on water :)
Why is "Well, it wouldn't get enough power from the air" not good enough? This is basic physics here... broadcast RF has a certain total power level over any given antenna area based on the power of the transmitter(s) and the distance from the broadcast RF source(s); this device, in order to meet Bluetooth tx power requirements for their required transmit interval, along with the power for the chips, etc., requires more than that. Done.
The math and physics required here are not complicated nor do they take much space to explain. What exactly are you looking for?
Something like this exists already, although the Blutooth LE tags have a battery:
http://www.thetileapp.com
A developer who works at Square once told me that Blutooth LE devices can be used for years on a single battery. I didn't read TFA but I wonder if they actually said that there are no batteries, or if they just meant you don't have to worry about charging/changing batteries.
And I say, with my freedom of speech, "Caveat Emptor" - let the buyer beware. Is this any worse than the dot-com bubble? I am surprised to see so much call for regulation and oversight here on /. where I would have expected to see more focus on the decentralized crowd-based DEBUNKING that this article itself represents. Many technological items were impossible, then impractical, then suddenly commonplace, so distinguishing between "bad science" and "immature technology" is harder than it used to be. Add a generation of insistence that "everyone's opinion has validity" and it's no wonder that science is having such a hard time.
But... but... TESLA!
deathray...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I often wonder about this.
Don't people have fixed places where they put things?
I put my glasses, keys and wallet in the same place every single day.
That way I always know where they are unless someone else moves them around.
When I pay for something it's the same. I have a specific order that I do things in, so I don't forget my debit card or whatever at the store.
It boggles the mind how people manage to lose keys or wallets all the time.
Wow, only $1000? That's AWESOME! For a foldable car I'd be willing to pay, like $10,000, but if you're going to do a kickstarter and I can get in at the $1000 level, I'm TOTALLY in!!
And that's probably exactly how these charlatans have managed to get that many supporters.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Energy harvesting photovoltaic solar panels obviously don't work either and are easily refuted.
Seems to be involved https://www.facebook.com/atlas...
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
i've invested $10k, wouldn't have known without ur help.
My rule of thumb is, if it were a real source of free energy, I would be hearing about it on the news, not Kickstarter. It's just like with Viagra back in the day. For a thousand years people were advertising dick pills. But when a legit one was invented, it was all anybody on TV talked about for a year.
And so was George Carlin when he said "You nail two piece of wood together that have never been nailed together before and some schmuck will buy it from you."
Green energy is on a lot of people's minds in far more a religious way than a practical one. A lot of people believe in global warming...I mean global climate change...I mean global climate disruption so much that they will buy anything to satisfy their need to continue believing it in the same way that people keep buying the latest fads in diet and exercise products. I'll make a prediction: in about 4 years, solar power will fade away once the subsidies disappear and people find out that it's really not cost effective if they have to pay for the whole thing.
If you are near an AM radio station or tv station antennae it is possible to extract enough energy to charge a small battery pack. I did it around 12 years ago.
You need to live near field.. you can't even be 1 mile away. I am talking no more than 300 ft away... the antennea is kind of big. It's kind of like the way proximity security cards work.. the antennea looks identical. Also don't expect to fast charge a battery with it. It took 1 week to charge a AA battery. I left the charger in a field near a broadcast antennea. no one disturbed it. It took a long time to charge one AA battery, solar is faster.
A parasitic load on a high power line... now that's a totally different beast :)
"There is a sucker born every minute!"
Things like this prove him right. "A fool and his money are soon parted...."
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
What about solar figgin' roadways? Even the government was duped on that one for about $700,000.
At $14-16 it's not too expensive.
Which is where argument to moderation fallacy kicks in. Followed by a dose of loss aversion.
"Sure, it may not work as advertised, but it may still work. And at this price, it's a bargain."
Seriously, I'm reading the description and I find myself thinking "Maybe they'll just slap a battery in it and it will work for a couple of months... I could live with that..."
And I KNOW that it's a scam.
And I am clearly not alone in this way of thinking. From the google doc list of reasons why it is fake:
5) At the very, very least the iFind will have to be "recharged" by placing it next to a strong wifi signal once a week or month. In retrospect, this would be fine. Yet WeTag has not brought this up when asked.
Sure, it's fake. But dammit wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Wait, you claim that AM radio is BS? My sarcasm detector is on it's annual overhaul, so I can't tell if you're just joking, or if you really have no idea what you're writing about.
A long time ago I found schematics to do what these people are claiming they can do, but if I remember the physics, you need like a 200ft wire strung around to get something half-way usable (useable as in to maybe light an LED or something)
I can't find the schematics anymore, so I can't test it. If I could find the schematics some day I would like to play around with the concept.
If a Carrington event ever happened, however, then it would be a useless little item, since you need radio towers actively broadcasting.
Does anyone know what this device is called? I found it like 8 years ago on the web somewhere. :(
It' octarine.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Bluetooth communication chips require on the order a of a few 10s of mW to communicate. This would be like a crystal radio being able producing an audio level of 140 dB into your ear (10 mW/cm^2 -> 200 Pa sound wave using standard air impedance), as loud as sticking your head into a jet engine exhaust. Sound contains very little energy typically, and when you get to something beyond a few microwatts you are either talking about something very loud, or something over a very large area (And still loud if from a single source).
Umm.. hate to break it to you, but the U.S. government *IS* bankrupt.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. [/InigoMontoya] Our debt to GDP ratio isn't even the highest it ever has been. Back in the 1945s we had a debt to GDP ratio of around 113%. Right now our debt to GDP ratio is about 101%. Not good but we've literally seen worse. That number could easily be drawn down if we had some leaders who were interested in actually leading.
Furthermore ALL of the debt the US has is denominated in US dollars. Though it would be a terrible idea, the US can essentially print the money if they wanted to. People make a big deal about the fact that the US owes China (and Japan too) a trillion dollars. However think about that. China can't dump the debt, they can't demand repayment or foreclose on anything, and there isn't even anyone who is willing or able to buy that much debt. They are stuck with it at least for quite a few years. They've bought it to protect their currency and to maintain their low exchange rate to support their export economy. China can't really do much about the debt without screwing themselves in the process.
If you don't call 17+ TRILLION DOLLARS in the hole, and not to mention an uncountable number of trillions in unfunded "entitlements" bankrupt, I don't know what to tell you...
I call it irresponsible. I don't call it bankrupt because it isn't. Bankrupt means you are UNABLE to pay your debts. The US government is perfectly able, it is just unwilling. We have a bunch of irresponsible leaders (on both sides) who put ideology and power above all else and we keep electing them for some reason. The problem could be solved by some combination of reducing spending and raising taxes. Pick the combination that makes you happiest, but the only items that truly matter are the military, medicare/medicaid and social security since together they account for around 3/4 of the budget. I'd start with the military since we spend WAY too much on "defense" for no sane reason and it accounts for close to a quarter of government spending. Any budget that doesn't address military and medicare spending/revenue is nothing more than political propaganda.
That works 99% of the time. The problem comes when, for some stupid reason, you decide to deviate from your normal plan. Like you are holding your wallet in your hand rather than putting it back in your pocket because you know you will need it in a minute. Then something distracts you, you set it down without thinking, and now you've screwed up.
I do a similar thing around the house, where I have certain places where things should always go, but for some reason I'll occasionally put something somewhere else because, at the moment it makes sense and is totally obvious where it is. Later when I go to find it, I realize it was only obvious at the moment because I knew where it was and thus it "made sense". Of course, unlike the wallet example above, these sorts of things would not be candidate for locator tags. I'm just explaining how it happens to adults.
Set aside the bad science, the ignorance of physics and the lack of EE knowledge. One of the key aspects of this project is that the iFind people were only seeking $25,000 in the beginning. Their goal for this $22,000 (subtract KS & Amazon fees and the bad credit cards) would not fund even the molds for the plastic housing. There is no mention of any funding source other than Kickstarter, so how could they possibly have succeeded? Another issue are the stretch goals. Most projects set the stretch goals a short distance from the original and add a minor upgrade or color. This project funds at $25,000 and has three stretch goals of $100,000, $150,000 and $500,000. Now for the science part: The first stretch goal - a user programmable rope function that is "adjustable in length"? A reliable EE would be thinking "duration or interval" not length. But they really mean "length" as in a lineal distance. They write the product will allows you to set "any range distance" to alert the tag. So on $22,000 they were producing a energy vampire tag and at $115,000 you get a vampire tag with unlimited range.
free energy claims are 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999% likely BS,
Your numbers are almost as questionable as the ones posted by the iFind developers.
Almost.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Nobody disputes that you can extract energy from around you. Nobody disputes that you can take 30 ft of wire as an antenna and harvest enough energy to power a crystal radio that generates audio that can be heard if you put earphones into your ear canal. What people are questioning is whether you can harvest enough energy from a 2 sq cm area to power a blue tooth locator and buzzer. Do the math, get back to us.
It could be that many of these pledges are from attorneys preparing to file a class-action lawsuit once the Kickstarter ends and the non-functional device ships (or doesn't ship).
Your argument - Many technological items were impossible, then impractical, then suddenly commonplace - tends to resonate with some people. Who is to say that will not happen again? But in using this argument we avoid an unpleasant historical truth; the scientists of that field, the technologist of that field, the experts in that field, were by and large not surprised by the breakthrough and impossible was never part of the equation. Once electricity was understood the light bulb was never seen as Ãoealmost impossibleà by the experts in the field. It was not a Ãoemiracleà at all, rather the logical outgrowth of a systematic and scientific search. There was nothing "sudden" about it. EdisonÃ(TM)s patents and breakthroughs amazed the common person and headline writers because of the implications on society, not the technology itself. Nobody in the business saw it as a sudden event. The technology was the outgrowth of prior systematic research and studies. It was the average commentator, uninformed investor and Ãoeman-on-the-streetà who were shocked and then delighted. Look at quantum computing today. Researchers, physicists and mathematicians in that field have been hard at work since Feynman proposed it in 1982. When it is enabled those in the field will not be amazed and commonplace use by these people will have been assumed long before we see it.
That would interfere with the Free Market, ever be it praised. What about innovation? What if it crushes the entrepreneurial spirit!?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"Some people have wondered why I do not have a robust presence online. Well, unfortunately, my identity was once stolen..."
I stopped reading after that.
Zillow's accuracy varies.... wildly.
What are your thoughts on solar and wind and free energy...
You keep your keys in a single place? What single place would that be? You never deviate from that single place? How do you go through an airport security line without putting your keys someplace you don't normally place them? When you travel do you leave your keys at home in their single place or do you place them someplace else? Just like with people claiming a virgin birth, there are people who claim they've never misplaced their keys but I don't believe them either. I'd discuss it more with you but I've got to figure out where the kids left the damn remote.
We only want regs on renewable energy... ;-))
Sadly, he's in the video at 3:17.
This reminds me of the clothes dryer scam where people sent money and got a clothes line. Harvesting stray energy is real enough. But harvesting meaningful amounts is another kettle of fish. And the con men may just be planing their way out of court by demonstrating that stray energy actually can be harvested. Hold a neon tube under a power line and the tube will glow. Long insulated lines strung in the air will build up enough charge to keep an LED lit. But how many people have a ten mile long wire in the air?
Obviously there IS Real free energy - since so much effort is put into scamming people with the fake ones (Thrive, etc.) If it were not for these scams, WITTS would already have what it needs to get the real working devices into the hands of the masses.
Is it still a scam if I pledge money using the debit card number in their video?
They don't care if idiots are duped. The more fools the merrier. Kickstarter gets a cut. Banning such snakeoil scams is a hit to their bottom line. It's more profitable to leave them up. They'll only do something about it if it makes them look bad so the potential for loosing more money overall is greater than the chunk of several million they get for doing nothing but hosting essentially a blog service + donate button.
Protip: Marketing folks have already sold their souls to the devil. Kickstarter is thus evil, it cares not wrong from right.
I didn't check your link. I just wanted to let you know that when I was a kid, I had a crystal radio that produced sound in the earphone solely off the energy captured in the RF received. It had no batteries or external power source.
free energy claims are 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999% likely BS
Yes, but I've found a way to capture and concentrate the 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001% that isn't likely BS, and turn it into real useful products. Donate to my kickstarter...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Quantum Energy Generator. Now that's the stuff.
I skipped around the video and the best part is at 9:20:
"When I stand in that lab, I can feel the magical presence of the QEG."
I hope that they are using the money to go beat everyone who donates to it with a stick.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Stick won't be enough, needs a proper clue-by-four at least. I mean, just check out them comments:
$10.00
Scott P. Garcia
13 hours ago
Hello my name is Scott,If i could i would donate more.At this time i'm financially broke but I really believe in what you and your family is Doing.I was going to set up a go fund me account for my food truck that I would like to build but I know how crucial every dollar is in this stage.I would like to build out my food truck to nourish my fellow brothers and sisters and attempt to educate all on Energy.As we are of great energy,as the frequency of 528 hertz can heal.It all makes perfect sens,As everything is of a vibration.Michio kaku is on the right track,As Edgar cayce in reading from the akashcic records was.Meditation is key.
Problem is, this affects Kickstarter's credibility as everyone who gets burned on this will think twice about supporting Kickstarter projects in the future. Services like Kickstarter seem to forget that even though their revenue is coming from the creators, their primary user-base is still those pledging and when you want people to plunk down large sums for (degrees of) unknowns, then you better have user trust as a primary company value.
The iFind trademark is WeTag, Inc. CORPORATION TEXAS 3309 San Mateo Drive Plano TEXAS 75023
If you search http://www.locatefamily.com you will find that Plano, 3309 San Mateo Drive, Wanda Klimek, 469-358-0880.
Ms. Wanda Klimek - President. Wanda oversees the financial and pre-order sales aspects of the company. She is also responsible for managing the customer service and media campaigns. Previously she has founded several successful small businesses.
http://www.gofundme.com/HopeGirlFixtheworldQEG $36,503
"We call this device the Quantum Energy Generator, or QEG. I am now here, living on the property where the QEG is being assembled, observing its progress. It is almost complete, and we will soon be flipping the switch that can change the world.
The QEG is a crisp, clean, and modern device based on Tesla's public domain design and built with incredible engineering precision (for example it has over 300 precision cut steel plates each at 18 ½ 1,000ths of an inch thick). The QEG is portable, the size of an average home generator, can easily hook up to your existing electrical system, and weighs approximately 120 pounds. The QEG can power your entire home, several of them can power anything from a skyscraper to a cruise ship, and you will never have to pay an electric bill ever again. "
I want the email list of those backers, I have some magical healing stones to sell!
I found a business licence for WeTag Inc, https://mycpa.cpa.state.tx.us/... registered at an address in Houston TX , which, on Street View, is a little office block in the middle of a residential neighborhood. I also found a PO box in Plano TX suposedly attached to WeTagInc.com, but thats of little use. I find it odd that there is a business licence in Houston, but they claim to be in Plano. WeTag Incorporated PO Box 261956, Plano, Texas, 75026.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Nokia hopes to create a device that could harvest enough power to keep a cell phone topped up. Link here: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/413744/wireless-power-harvesting-for-cell-phones/
Per the comments about using crowd-funding for start up companies-- the best solution on the table is to have third party verification systems like www.crowdtrust.com. The market can't police itself. It would be quite difficult if platforms like kickstarter and those interested in equity crowd funding spent all their time doing background checks.
Not much different than these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Engrav... Or like the perpetual energy machine or a magic pill - impossible. Please do not fund and if you did, take back your pledge!
IIRC Plano is the HQ of EDS. Perhaps they are fool enough to think something good, reputation wise, might rub off EDS onto them?
If that's the case, they are clearly not technical.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When I am home my keys are in a box next to the door where I put them each time I come in the door. When I am away from home my keys are in my pocket or in my desk. It is NOT difficult to keep track of important things. It merely takes developing good habits. Good habits includes putting things away in places that make sense. I'm going to need my keys when I leave the house and get into my car, so the keys are kept at the garage door. It would be silly to keep my keys in a cabinet in the kitchen, for example, unless I entered and exited the house through the kitchen.
Obviously you can't keep keys in a single place at ALL times. Your airport security line is a good example. But how am I going to lose my keys in an airport security line? I put them through the machine and I pick them up on the other side and put them back into my pocket. Here's a simple tip that will save you a lot of panic at airport security lines: after you pick up your stuff, run through a simple mental checklist- keys, wallet, passport, tickets, boarding passes and then anything else you had to let go of for the security check, such as a laptop, phone, etc. To help remember, think about what you need for your trip- passport, ticket, boarding pass, wallet, and what you need if you don't go- wallet and keys. There, that wasn't so hard, was it?
I admit that I didn't always have such good habits,. When I was much younger I spent a fair amount of time searching for things that I should have known the locations of at all times. I learned from the time I wasted how not to be such a dope. I know of other people who seem to be incapable of learning such lessons. For them the device described might be good, if it works.
Anyone take a look at the whois data? Some interesting stuff there.... Anyone good with Maltego?
I'm confused. I have one of your early prototypes, and when I aim it at your post it blinks like crazy!
That means your post is a scam. But if your post is a scam, my device shouldn't be blinking. But my device is blinking...so your post must be a scam.....but...
... backing slowly away from the imminent head explosion as the logic circuits overload ...
You definitely need to get yourself on the waiting list for the upgraded PRO version with the quantum solvers then...
Perfect for exactly these chicken and egg type problems, where both sides are seemingly full of shit simultaneously!
(and the upgraded blue LEDs are friggin' awesome)
That Kickstarter is an investment, not a store. Not all investments turn out to be profitable or even can provide the rewards. Some of them can and will go belly up. One should not _invest_ unless one can lose the money at that instant. No matter how cool and l33t the idea sounds and seems.
Remember this? This was RCA not some fly-by-night huckster.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-01/rca-airenergy-pulls-power-thin-air-charging-your-phone-wi-fi
Maybe it didn't work as well as claimed.
Transferring wealth from stupid people to smart (albeit dishonest) people... the classic function of cons in society.
There is something missing and this points to scam. Where is the WeTag expert in this field? They don't even have a captive consultant that will put his or her credentials on the line and say, "I have reviewed the material, the prototypes and the math. This will work if (insert disclaimer here)." There has to be a person who developed the idea available. There is always an "inventor" of a new application for technology who can speak to the concept. But not here. Many of the people complaining about the science, technology and math have experience in this field. The only critical studies done to this point have been by critics. The "technology papers (2)" put out by WeTag are embarrassing on so many levels so as to be worthless. There are no parameters stated, no means and methods, no math, no measurement standards, no identification of material, location or conditions. So how can anyone conclude that this is anything but a mash up and scam?
the bit that annoys me, "An average person spends nearly 10 minutes before leaving their home looking for keys, wallets, or handbags."
who ever doesn't learn to put stuff back in the same place doesn't deserve any of those things!
Really stupid people are going to waste their money, regardless of what laws you pass to protect them, or what you tell them. They are going to do it. Let them.
Why should I feel pity for such a creature that is too lazy and stupid in this age of having thousands of libraries literally at your fingertips instantly ?
All you asshats that think people need to be protected form such an obvious scam - consider it a public service that money is not being used for some political ends !
This is an awesome amazing golden opportunity to educate people that have self-identified as in the most need of education. If you want to help them, help them.
well couldn't they have just made a legit device that works on solar power? what the actual hell, bluetooth doesn't even have a range of 200ft
I have an acoustic resonator? on the right side of my head. It is called a bone anchored hearing aid by people who know people in the CIA. It has no power source but a government transmitter on some some cell towers..I do not know the frequency. I understand that "chips" like mine can either be general or have up to 175,000 unique frequencies. I have been told that mine is 10 years old and was put in by the Pennsylvania State Universities' Acoustic Research Lab without my permission. Things like refrigerators, air conditioners and acoustic lasers make it much louder immediately.
I have the same disbelief as this company with their tags. I don't believe it it bluetooth, either.
Another powerless device is the American Embassy bugging device put in the Great Seal of the United States by the Russians. The Russians beamed the Embassy with microwave radiation and it was never explained how it worked. I have heard that it is in the CIA museum.
If you are interested in seeing my chip: Charles Andrew 904 Southgate Dr. State College, PA 16801 814 308 2635
Mine works great. I point it at this post and it shows it is not a scam. Do you have the polarity inverter on?
OK this may be a scam. But passive RFID devices have been around for a while now. They get their power from a transmitted signal and then reply. These are common. Why wouldn't this work on the Bluetooth frequencies? I'm sure the Bluetooth transmitter has a much lower output but that's a matter of sensitivity not possibility.
Do backers get an explanation on the suspension?
Kickstarter shitcanned it in the last days!
As The google doc puts it (http://bit.do/ifs)
SCIENCE: 1 SCAMMERS: 0
Thankyou Slashdot, your informed skepticism (and humor) was a great help.
[FrLz]
Energy harvesting technology is real, but you don't get much energy unless there's a transmitter nearby, or a really big one in the area. There are now ICs which slowly accumulate energy in a capacitor, and when they have enough, power up some device and run it for a few milliseconds. Depending on RF levels in the area, you may get some useful output several times a second, or several times a day.
Now if you had something like a microwave flashlight (an low power oscillator and horn antenna) you could wave it around and wake up RFID tags, which could then report back. That could be a viable commercial product, more for industrial and commercial than home use. ("Where's a carton of P/N xxxxx-xxxx parts? Oh, there it is, behind that other box.")
Actually I didn't see anything outrageously scammy in this incident, neither the linked reports were whitewash and bad science any more then the "excellent dissection" of the claims.
So the "dissector" did some back-of-the-envelop order-of-magnitude calculation and found that 1 minute "rope" function cannot be sustained unless the tag is within 50cm of a router. I thought the matter of fact here is not 1 minute "rope", but 5 minute "rope", which would supposedly require 5 times less energy and can be placed 2 times further away. Using the same number the dissecting article uses, their tag in 5 minute rope uses just about 2-3 microW of power, as much as the counter article itself calculates is available at 4 m distance.
What more, the second linked report openly shows how tag can sort off maintain its energy at 1-2 m from emitters, but looses charge at 3m, which maybe very sloppy experiment, have to give it that, but IN NO WAY CONTRADICTS with anything the "critics" say, actually.
I can agree that 1-2m range in lowest ping mode is not practical, as the critics seized upon, however, people THIS IS A PROTOTYPE not a final product. If they had already polished and awesome device, why the fk would they need a kickstarter campaign???
That said, I can see a ton of ways they can try and improve their product to be more practical after collecting the funding: they can try to further reduce power consumption of the circuit, if they just used off-the-shelf components now, the possibility of this is quite quite plausible; they can try to work out some software tricks, such as remembering the location of the tag the last time it handshake'd; they can try to register a freq band and sell dedicated RF charging stations for charging their tags at home; they can ask people to re-charge their tags every two weeks by placing them in 1-2m radius of a wifi router -- any one of these is better than having a batteried device that needs change of battery or be plugged into a charger every time.
As for Dr Paul McArthur identity, it is clearly stated that he is a research professor at U of Utah, and he may not in fact have a sizable footprint on the "internet". I know a ton of professors who do not use LinkedIn or FB, or even if they do have such account, keep in nominally. That's because these people are too busy with teaching, advising students, doing research, and managing universities to also deal with the self-masturbation called social networking. Besides, they already have an outlet to connect to the people they need, it is called peer-reviewed journals and academic publications. So it is quite possible the guy wouldn't have a ton of blogs, twitter streams and yada yada. Where his footprint should be searched is in academic journals and patent office, where he does have hits as some people here already pointed out.
I agree that the project description is overly optimistic and may not quite correspond the final product they will be able to put out, but to call it a complete scam it is just another mass hysteria driven by know-it-all nerds feeling empowered by self-published blogs and modern social networking, who think they know it all but but really don't know shit.
Took a look at the address in Earth's Street View. (Yes, I know I could have done it in Maps, but Earth is just so much more fun.) An ordinary house in an ordinary residential neighborhood.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
I have had to work with EDS before. What was that you said about reputations?
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.