Someone stop me before I blog again!

The reviews are in!

"you really need to GET A LIFE!.....you freakin' loser." -- raftman007

"Every blog I have ever seen allows readers to comment. Why doesn't yours? ...That sort of tactic has had a name long before your cowardly effort came along. It is known as yellow journalism." -- kahler_manifold2

This crap is so far outside the range of normal human behavior that you should be under professional care and observation....24 hours per day. You are in danger of doing something really dangerous to yourself or others." -- harvardbillpayer

Oh, yeah, there was some positive feedback as well, but that's not as much fun. I thought the Pulitzer nomination was a bit over the top anyhow.

However, all joking aside, I thought I would address a few serious criticisms brought up, relating to facts I've supposedly gotten wrong.

"REFR "strangely got no share of proceeds" from liquidation of SPDi. Entirely false, just read freely available documents."

The information was correct based upon information I had at the time. Subsequent new information was later noted.

"Victor Keen is on the payroll. At his law firm, not REFR."

Apparently we are supposed to believe Corporate Secretary is an unpaid position. You may believe that if you like, but I don't.

"Management has no profit incentive. What do you call all those shares they own?"

Hmm, the term "chicken feed" comes to mind for some reason. But seriously, they're practially obliged to hold some reasonable number of shares. There would simply be no case for anyone to buy the stock at all without that factor, and then how would they get financing for their next year of salaries?

"Visits to THV spots after intro of alter-lite window found no SPD product on display. Absolute lie. Comments of THV shareholder on the display were posted here."

This appears to be a valid correction, as far as it goes. At the same time, however, it was noted that Thermoview does virtually all of its sales over the phone rather than in-person at their stores, so an in-store display was not especially valuable.

"REFR does nothing to market SPD products. What does this liar think Mike LaPointe does? Write a blog that no one reads?"

Ah, I can feel the love. What Mike LaPointe does is market REFR stock, so if you want to call that a product then you may have a point. He'll also give a spiel (albeit sometimes an outdated one) to anyone who will print it free.

"Joe's motive is his salary. Yeah right. A guy with his Ivy League credentials could make at least a million bucks a year more with less aggravation at a New York law firm."

Yeah, but at the law firm he'd actually have to do things for people. I don't see at all what's "aggravating" about his job at REFR, unless you really don't like travelling around the country and the world at shareholder expense. Certainly the people who are ultimately paying him at REFR are a lot more understanding than your average legal client would be.

Additionally, claiming that these guys can pull down a million a year anytime they feel like it rather bears out my "chicken feed" remark, above.

There is something suspicious about IAS doing the roof for the Jeep Rescue (oooh shades of Soulard).

You're right, what was I thinking? There was nothing at all to worries that SPD Inc. might shut down.

Sjuan2 has no doubt changed his ID and starting posting under a new alias. More BS with no evidence.

The alternative would be that he got fed up with REFR's broken promises and walked away. I'd think you'd prefer my first explanation.

Memo to blogger, if you ever found out who you are trying to portray as a complete idiot, you might actually feel embarrassed.

From what I know of the REFR message board posters, most of them would rather die than let their identities be known. I'll let the reader decide who's actually embarrassed here.

How much is that blue in the window?

Yesterday, I referenced a $150 per square foot figure as the base cost of the "old" SPD. Today I'll fill in the blanks.

The source in question is a licensee called SPD Technologies. This licensee, formerly named Razor's Edge Technologies, is not to be confused with the old name of a division of L-3 Communications. (Which, needless to say, some message board super-sleuths initially did.)

Now the current version of the website does not show any prices, for the very good reason that they have no products to sell, but the friend of all Internet historians, the Wayback Machine, never forgets...

Here we have the most simple form of SPD product, an "SPD shade". The picture appears to be gone, but it is basically a naked sheet of SPD film with as little wiring as is necessary to make it functional. At any rate, that is not so much important as are the price quotes at the bottom. Over $1,000 for a 24"x24" piece of SPD film! Admittedly, that includes the overhead for the wiring and minimal frame, so let's compare prices among the different sizes.

The 36"x36" weighs in at $1789.08 (do they not believe in rounding off prices in Delaware?), or $734.36 more than the 24"x24". So, for an additional five square feet of SPD film, you pay $146.87 per square foot. The additional two square feet of the 24"x36" cost (vs. the 24"x24") cost $304.48, or $152.24 per square foot. So, on aggregate, the upcharge for an additional square foot of SPD film is on the order of $150 per square foot.

Now, why is this significant? Well, for one thing, our friendly REFR board member Dr. Malvino claims on his website that the production cost of SPD film should in fact be between $1 and $4 per square foot, while the generic "EC" film would cost a whopping $25 to $40 per square foot to produce. If the real cost of SPD film is over $100 per square foot, that rather makes a difference I think!

Even more damning is a 2001 trade show report by none other than our friend Michael LaPointe. Among much other material that is quite amusing in retrospect is a comment that their (unnamed) licensee's "projected price point" for SPD windows was supposed to be "$15-$30 per square foot".

Well, gee, only off by a factor of 10. Guess it's only appropriate that REFR stock is down by a similar amount from its highs of that year.

On that note, have a great Memorial Day weekend, but never forget why we observe it.

LaPointe and Just Auto

REFR got its favorite kind of exposure -- the free kind -- in an article posted to just-auto.com yesterday. As usual, the article was completely uncritical and effectively repeated REFR's claims verbatim. This is not really meant to demean Dave Leggett, the editor of just-auto.com, or the publication, or to suggest any kind of collusion was intended. Certain publications have a limited budget for fact checking, and have to rely on the companies they interview being true to their word. It works most of the time, and doesn't automatically make them illegitimate.

However, every so often, they get a company with a self-promotional agenda, and then you get something like the three paragraphs REFR got.

US-based Research Frontiers Inc has developed a light control technology, known as SPD (Suspended Particle Device) for controlling light in vehicles and other applications such as aircraft, architectural and marine. A thin film is sandwiched inside the glass that conducts a low voltage of electricity. As a current passes through it, masses of suspended particles join together or disperse, allowing more or less light to pass through. It means that you can simply turn a dial to block out the light, eliminating the need for a sliding shade panel all together. That’s important for the sunroof makers as they move towards offering panoramic roof designs. Research Frontiers is on the brink of releasing its second generation SPD film.

That's perfectly fine for the first half a paragraph, but unfortunately, it still remains true that SPD in no way eliminates the need for an opaque shade. No matter how dark SPD gets it never becomes opaque, and when you're dealing with the intense light of the sun, true opacity is vital.

The last statement is comical for reasons I'm sure just-auto.com never suspected, that REFR has been "on the brink" of "second generation" film for over a year now, and is almost exactly one year late on its initial projection of film availability following the announcement of SPD Inc. closing.

That's not even getting into the relatively fine point that REFR will never be doing any "releasing" of its own accord -- such matters are strictly relegated to the licensees.

Compared to other transparency control devices – such as electrochromic (EC) or liquid crystal – SPD is cheaper per square foot and reacts faster. It can be totally dark, totally bright or somewhere in between. EC technology can still be tuned but not to the extent that SPD can. Another advantage is that SPD is that it is a film-based technology. That means it can be shipped all over the world. It also means that it can be applied to plastic as well as glass, which can be applied to curved as well as flat surfaces. In the default state, with the power off, the window is dark and would not be able to form the main component of a windscreen. Perhaps the upper band strip but not the entire windscreen. But when a motorist parks their car, SPD would be in the ‘off’ state, an advantage for sunroof applications.

Okay, first sentence. There is in fact no basis for making any favorable claims about the cost of "second generation" SPD. Indeed, other nominally "rubber stamp"-ish article referenced SPD's extraordinarily high costs, pegged around $150 per square foot. (The basis for that figure is the subject of another long-overdue article.) EC has never been quoted at so high a price -- most likely because its purveyors would never think to attempt to market it at such a price point.

The second sentence, we've already covered. SPD cannot go totally dark. It can't really go totally light either, but how much of the "unclarity" is due to the SPD and how much to the window itself is hard to gauge.

The third sentence, again, assumes things about EC not in evidence, and quite possibly long out of date. Not to mention that there's more than one kind of technology coming under the umbrella of "EC" (sometimes, even SPD itself is considered as such!)

The fourth sentence refers to an improvement SPD made back in 1991(!) To read the paragraph you'd think this was something new, and furthermore, something that EC and LC cannot claim! Go ahead and tell the makers of LCD computer displays about the non-shippability of their technology.

The rest of the paragraph calms down and even touches on a disadvantage of SPD, the fact that its default "off" state disqualifies it from consideration as overall windshield tint. If you're wondering about the term "windscreen", it turns out that just-auto.com is a UK-based site. One wonders, then, where Bob Hudson has gone off to.

All right, last paragraph:

Auto applications include sunroofs, sunvisors, rear-view mirrors, instrument panels and navigation systems. “There are numerous studies that show the increase of accidents when driving into the sun,” said Mike LaPointe, Vice President, Marketing, Research Frontiers. “If you had an SPD sun visor fitted to your car, it could be in the down position and you could see clearly through it but if you turned into the sun, it would darken immediately. I think that this is an application that it would be difficult for EC to penetrate because of the slow transition speed. So I certainly think that you will see SPD visors.”

And here is where we learn the source of all this "information", our favorite VP, Mike LaPointe. This paragraph reads kind of oddly, though. Twice LaPointe says "I think", almost as if he's trying to convince himself. Or maybe just cover himself. But once again, this is almost as much a matter bad-mouthing a very loosely-defined general overview of EC which may well be long out of date, as it is of trying to show the upside to SPD.

Just another case of REFR getting something published for the benefit(?) of their shareholders.

LCD vs. SPD

Above, a Dell 20.1-inch flat panel LCD monitor. Below, an SPD prototype computer monitor, as proudly displayed to this day on the REFR website. No further comment appears necessary.



All right, one comment, more in the form of a quote, actually:

"IMO, REFR is better than DELL. It's not a slam-dunk quite yet, but it's as close as you will ever get in the stock market."
-- Dr. Al Malvino, future REFR board member, on the Yahoo! message boards, May 4, 1999

"Hey, I'm buyin' over here!"

It has long been suggested (and, naturally, flatly denied) that many of the REFR insider stock purchases are "for show", as if to say, "we're buying, shouldn't you?" Al Malvino's regular 300-share purchases seems particularly flagrant in this regard, as many metrics for detecting high insider purchasing activity key off the frequency of transactions more than the actual amounts involved. In theory, this works off the fact that most executives consider it proper to limit their transactions to a small annual window to avoid the appearance of trying to game their own stock. REFR insiders, clearly, have no such inhibitions.

Possibly the worst example, though, came when Corporate Secretary and Board of Directors member Victor Keen made a stock purchase in February 2003, and the company issued a press release about it. Yes, really!

Mind you, not long after that purchase and the market bottom a month later, that purchase price actually started to look really good. Alas, it did not quite hold up for the two-year holding period, and in any event Keen did not sell with the stock being held at $6.00 in anticipation of the secondary offering, so ultimately, Keen has taken a bath on those shares along with everyone else.

But then again, that's not news.

Veni, Vidi, Wiki for the shorts

The dream (no pun intended) of SPD being featured on Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner appears to now be completely dead. The source for the latest revelation is, of all places, a Wikipedia article on the new plane. The section of that article detailing the plane's features specifies "liquid crystal display-based auto dimming" on the cabin windows, the same type used on high-end automobile sunroofs such as on the Maybach.

Tough luck for the shareholders. Tune in tomorrow for their next rationalization.

Addendum: More discussion of the LCD window feature can be found here.

Isoclima in isolation

Possibly one of the most telling licensees REFR has in its stable is Isoclima SpA of Italy. They are unique in that they have taken two seperate SPD-related licenses, one to produce film, and the other to sell products containing SPD film.

Given that Isoclima has clearance to work both ends of the process, they are unique in being a potentially independent supplier of SPD products. They can make the film, "sell" it to themselves, and make it into products without having to depend on anyone else to be a supply chain or vendor for them.

Yet, nearly three years after setting all this up, Isoclima has yet to announce any kind of SPD product. Indeed their products page still includes glass with a liquid crystal film (Isolite), as well as a window with a built-in Venetian blind (Luxaclair) -- the very kind of things that the SPDiots claim are the horse-and-buggy to SPD's automobile.

Yet, while Alberto Bertolini seems to do nothing apart from show up at most major REFR events (annual meetings and whatnot), that appears to be good enough for most of the Type 3 crowd to presume he's hard at work making SPD into a major force.

I only wish I could be thought of so highly for taking an overseas vacation.