Is Kickstarter covering up a scam? An open letter to CEO Yancey Strickler by Joanie Lemercier.
I spent the past 10 years working mostly with unusual displays: 3d stereoscopic screens, projection mapping, holography; so when I first read about th eHolus, an “Interactive Tabletop Holographic Display”, it piqued my curiosity. That moment soon passed as I noticed that the claims were hugely overblown. H+tech, the company behind Holus, broke several of Kickstarter’s rules, using photorealistic CGI, misleading language and obfuscation techniques to make their product appear considerably more impressive than it can ever hope to be. Their strategy proved successful and Holus reach it’s initial funding goal in 19 minutes!
Yet, their tech is nothing new. In fact it’s a repackaging of an old optical trick from the 19th century called a Pepper’s Ghost: basically a computer monitor reflected on a piece of glass.
What’s really messed up about this is the original video that most people saw with more CGI was removed and that KickStarter is totally OK with anyone putting a “KickStarter STAFF PICK” badge on any kickstarter without approval. Why wouldn’t Kickstarter have the creators to just start over at this point?
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Did Holus scam 200.000$ of Kickstarter backers using a 19th century parlor trick?
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