Demasoni is working on a revolutionary new data compression method, using something called the Starr Transform.

http://www.demasoni.com/

Miracle video encoding technology verified by this Australian testing firm.

http://www.tollygroup.com/TS/2003/MediaWorldCom/AdamsPlatform/TollyTS203125MediaWorldOctob
er2003.pdf

It appears that the technology promised by Adam Clark has found a buyer. MWC is paying $11 million for the IP that is reputed to be able to create a full-screen video experience over normal voice lines.

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20031001/pdf/3j7tqwvlr3y77.pdf

Hash Zip attempts to store 256 byte blocks by hashing them down to 30 byte blocks. Decompression seems problematic.

http://freedaemonconsulting.com/tech/hzip.php

A great example of an incredible compression claim. There’s just a teeny tiny bit good thinking in here, and a huge amount of tangential speculation attempting to walk upright on two legs. Read it and just be glad the author doesn’t seem to be raising funds.

http://www.maui.net/~shaw/celes/dcmind.html

Kevin Short at the University of New Hampshire has created a company called Chaoticom that is raising money to develop his new idea called Chaotic Compression Technology. Until we see some papers, algorithms, or products this is going to have to be categorized as an Incredible Claim.

http://www.ceps.unh.edu/focus/focus701.pdf

Back in 1998 I heard from a poor soul who was being encouraged to put some money into the Premier America, makers of the MINC Compression System. Seeing that MINC promised an iterative compression system that guaranteed any ratio you cared to dial in, I encouraged him to run, not walk, away from this opportunity. This led to an email conversation with someone from the company, assuring me that they would have a real product on the market quite soon now.

I haven’t heard a peep out of Premier America since then, so hopefully they have stopped raising funds for their unlikely system. Fortunately, a good soul named Chez DuLac has preserved MINC’s manifesto on his web site, along with his reasoned rebuttal.

http://members.attcanada.ca/~zoltan/cookdocs/16.html

Pegasus Web Services has a new compression algorithm that they say can put 1.2GB on a floppy disk! No demo software yet, but if you’re interested in licensing the technology they are ready to talk.

http://www.fly-pegasus.com/pr_invent.htm

This isn’t a new story, but the Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville gives a lot of detail in this treatment. A fellow named Madison Priest seems to have pulled in millions with his promises of hardware that can push high quality movies over conventional phone lines. Lots of interesting details, including the famous coax line hidden in the power cord! The second part of this story can be found
here.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/050502/met_9322821.html

The folks at Zeosync have been making some pretty bold claims regarding their yet-to-be-shown compressin tools. This patent application might open the door a bit.

http://l2.espacenet.com/dips/viewer?PN=WO0219536&CY=ep&LG=en&DB=EPD

PCWorld takes a skeptical look at Zeosync’s claims, and looks askance at the felony conviction of a key employee.

http://pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,86986,00.asp

This Wikipedia entry describes Fractal image compression. Short overview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_compression

Wired Magazine got ZeoSync CEO Peter St. George to sit down for a little chat. They posted the article here.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,49599,00.html

The folks at Slashdot having their typical discussion re: the incredible claims from ZeoSync.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/08/137246&mode=thread

Pixelon shows what happens when technology gets mixed up with big bucks and shady characters. The Industry Standard ran a great story on it, but as they have gone belly up
this link may not work any more. So this CNet news article will have to do.

Reader Tim A. points out that they also claim that ‘No longer is it necessary to produce complex waveforms by summing sinusoidal signals at varying frequencies’, yet later call their process an ‘additive reconstruction process’. Sounds much like the same process to me, just with different starting waveforms..

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1865665.html

Jules Gilbert has made a number of interesting and provocative posts to comp.compression. His claims have been met with vocal objections, but lack of public resolution will hamper the interested researcher.

http://groups.google.com/groups?as_ugroup=*compression*&as_uauthors=Jules%20Gilbert&hl=en

Teddy Turner, son of CNN mogul Ted Turner, was apparently named in a lawsuit in 1999 over an alleged misrepresentation of compression claims. A Florida company named Vision Tek claimed it could pump video over normal phone lines at high speeds, but was not able to satisy its investors, leading to a court case.

http://jacksonville.bcentral.com/jacksonville/stories/1999/03/15/story1.html

This issue of the newsletter talks about randomness, complexity, and a long-time favorite, recursive compression.

http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=1539/ddj0107cm/0107cm001.htm

The name says it all. A research project dedicated to recursive compression.

http://www.geocities.com/hmaxf_urlcr/

This issue of the Data Compression Newsletter from Dr. Dobb’s Journal looks at an idea for compression that doesn’t quite pan out.

http://www.ddj.com/maillists/compression/0012cm/0012cm001.htm

This issue of the Data Compression Newsletter from DDJ highlights a few of the better Incredible Claims to come along - including the biggest of all, the Pixelon fraud case.

http://www.ddj.com/maillists/compression/do200007cm/do200007cm001.htm

Patrick Craig has an interesting tale to tell. Without being a data compression expert, he managed to beat the $5000 compression challenge. You won’t see him taking an ocean cruise with his winnings, though. DCL reader commented: The challenge was obviously met.

http://www.geocities.com/patchnpuki/other/compression.htm

Lossy data compression which can reduce input files to 0% of their size. Hint: product was released April 1, 2000.
DCL reader Tim A. marvels: Wow! it’s even faster than tarring to /dev/null!

http://lzip.sourceforge.net/

This is a recurring theme in comp.compression, which I call “The Magic Function Theory.” It sounds like a good idea, but analysis shows that it won’t work.

http://www.dogma.net/markn/FAQ.html#Q19

The comp.compression newsgroup regularly sees posts from folks with incredible compression claims. This one, started by Itai Bar-Haim, is remarkable not so much for its claims, but rather for the incredible length of the thread it spawned. All Atai said was that mathematical combinations have nothing to do with compression. So there.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=39512e5b%40news.bezeqint.net

Klaus Holtz has some interesting ideas about compression theory.

http://www.autosophy.com/information.htm

Byte looks back at the amazing compression claims of a company named Web Technlogies.

http://www.byte.com/art/9511/sec3/art12.htm

Charles Bloom works up a quick coder that will compress random bytes down to about 6 bits per byte. Quite a feat, but it doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.

http://www.cbloom.com/news/radpack.c

Charles Bloom explains why there is no Santa Claus.

http://www.cbloom.com/news/nomagic.html

The comp.compression FAQ addresses this topic, reluctantly.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/section-8.html