| |
Ipix is Dead at last.
4th of
August 2006
Yahoo
news story
Knox News
story
Adora
Photography
For many years now Ipix have held back the development
of this photography type with a simple patent that stops people stitching
together 2 fish eye images together to make a sphere. This entire photography
was only possible because of the work that has been put in for free
by huge amounts of people world wide, mostly for free and in their
own time, like Dr
Helmut Dersch to name a few.
Now the company has fallen, it will take a while to find what is
going to happen to the patents and licenses and who will take it over,
but there are many people out there that use their system and
will require licences to produce virtual tours. Which if not acted
up on soon will move to another software like Realviz that does a very
similar type of product but doesn't need a licence key every time
you save a movie. So by the time the new owners get it on its feet,
hopefully most people will have moved on to another product.
Lets see who buys the patents, my bet will be somebody like VR Toolbox
or Realviz that have both already a dominant market position.
Washington Business Journal reported a loss of $3.8 Million dollars
in the fist quarter of this year, and their stock plummeted from
a healthy $17 per share in 2004 down to a recent 50
cents per share when Nasdaq halted their trading of the companies stock
on the 28th of July.
Even up to the year 2000, Ipix employed 750 employees and had a cash
injection of $30m in 2001 from a group of venture capitalists.
The companies highest profile project was a contract form the department
of defence advanced research projects agency, under which Ipix was
researching and developing what was to be the worlds highest resolution
video camera.
Other links relevant to Ipix
Say no to Ipix
Virtual
Properties
It is safe to say, very few people will miss Ipix except the list
of Realtors and Estate agents that paid for equipment and software
to now find they wont be able to buy Keys to generate the movies.
|
