Honda Insight Tops 'Engineering Elegance' Consumer Products Poll;
Gasoline/Electric Hybrid Car Takes Top Honors for Innovation Among Electronics
Engineers

PR Newswire
08/10/2000

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 10 -- Who says electronics engineers lack soul or passion?
Not ChipCenter. Ongoing interaction with readers provides a new discussion
topic, every week.

Most recently, "Engineering Elegance" -- which rates innovative consumer
products for their functionality in design -- stimulated unusually high numbers
of respondents. Readers were opinionated, even nasty.

The overwhelming winner? Honda's Insight Hybrid Electric Vehicle.

Other winners include:

     Toshiba America Digital still imaging camera
     Motorola Multi-Communications phone
     Ericsson Bluetooth phone
     Sony Digital musical player
     Panasonic Hard Disc Video Recorder
     Netpliance Internet Access Appliance

WHAT: ChipCenter is a popular tool for electronics engineers and purchasers that
consolidates editorial content, demand creation, interest fulfillment and
e-commerce transactions into one online source.

To provoke reaction from its users, ChipCenter rounded up seven cool consumer
products that any gadget freak or engineer (one in the same person) would love.
All reflect the innovation found in today's design engineering. The reaction to
ChipCenter's poll -- usually a much more sober affair -- brought out a range of
emotional and articulate responses. On the positive:

     "This is an elegant solution to the high cost of gasoline and the world's
     shrinking energy supply ( Honda Insight ."
     "One phone that replaces a belt full of individual gadgets (Motorola
     Multicommunications phone)."

The negative was downright nasty:

     "This is a list for teenagers, not engineers.  Get real."
     "This is boring.  Let's talk about something more interesting like 'What is
     the expected outcome of the Mars lander mission in 2002?'"

VOTING DETAILS: The rate of participation in ChipCenter polls is unusually high
for a technical site, but the 2nd "Engineering Elegance" voting was exceptional.
Readers who anticipated the topic change cast their votes immediately -- more
than 80% of the responses occurred within 36 hours of the new question being
posted.

ADDITIONAL INFO: ChipCenter has been named as one of the 200 best B2B companies
inForbes.com: Best of the Web: B2B. Interactive Week magazine's "Head2Head"
column gave ChipCenter an "A" as the interactive resource for "bringing together
in one place everything an engineer could want."

CONTACT: Peter Engel, pengel@stanton-crenshaw.com, or Kristy Boer, both of
Stanton Crenshaw Communications, 212-780-1900, for ChipCenter/ 09:57 EDT
Contact: /CONTACT: Peter Engel, pengel@stanton-crenshaw.com, or Kristy Boer,
both of Stanton Crenshaw Communications, 212-780-1900, for ChipCenter/
09:57 EDT