Rainbow (data storage)

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Rainbow is a developing paper based data storage technique first demonstrated by Indian student Sainul Abideen in November 2006^[1], which has been revealed to be a hoax.

The Rainbow data storage technology claims to use geometrical shapes such as triangles, circles and squares of various colors to store a large amount of data on ordinary paper or plastic surfaces. This would provide several advantages over current forms of optical- or magnetic data storage like less environmental pollution due to the biodegradability of paper, low cost and high capacity. Data could be stored on "Rainbow Versatile Disk" (RVD) or plastic/paper cards of any form factor (like SIM cards).^[2]

[edit] Rainbow Technology Debunked

Following the wide media attention this news got, Abideen's claims were debunked in articles by various experts.^[3]

They pointed out out that even if paper were printed at 1,200 dots per inch and then scanned in perfectly (which is not possible due to lighting and the current abilities of scanners), it still only leads to 1,440,000 colored dots per square inch. Even if a scanner could perfectly distinguish between 256 unique colors (thus encoding one byte per dot), the maximum possible storage is no more than 134 megabytes for an 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper, lower if you include error correction.

Sainul abdeen demonstrated his technology to the college and members of the indian press in the MES College of Engineering Computer lab, Kerala and was able to compress 450 sheets plain text of foolscap paper into a 1 inch square. He also demonstrated a 45 second audio clip compressed using this technology into an A4 sheet. While he claimed that the technology could be extended to 250 gb if we are using specific meterials and devices. Sainul is now working on the technology and a portable scanner and printer for his technology in collaboration with a UK based company.^{[citation needed]}