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Input Devices Businesses The Almighty Buck

CueCats vs. Common Sense Marketing 239

Posted by timothy from the for-the-well-equipped-home-library dept.
ColaMan writes "I see via boing boing that two million CueCats are up for sale at prices of $0.30 each in quantities above 500K. CueCats, being an integral part of one of the most pointless marketing schemes ever devised, never took off, but they were great for hacking. Has IT Marketing learned its history lesson, or will it forever doomed to repeat it?" Err, I'd go in for a group order, but I don't need two million at once.
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CueCats vs. Common Sense Marketing More

CueCats vs. Common Sense Marketing

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  • Hey, genius... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Sunday June 12, 2005 @02:41PM (#12796227)
    Err, I'd go in for a group order, but I don't need two million at once. Timothy

    Well, it's a good thing you only have to place an order of 500,000, then - as it CLEARLY states in the very first sentence of the submission blurb you greenlighted.

  • Blogdot (Score:4, Funny)

    by pjh3000 ( 583652 ) * on Sunday June 12, 2005 @02:49PM (#12796273)
    Wow, not only is Slashdot getting slower at reporting news, and repeating the same stories over and over again, now it's reporting news from other news sites. It's like watching Ted Koppel sit and watch CNN!

  • With a minimum order of 500,000... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...You'd wind up paying 150,000USD for a bunch of nigh-useless barcode scanners, joy!

  • Such a deal! (Score:5, Informative)

    by justinstreufert ( 459931 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @02:53PM (#12796307) Homepage
    Thirty cents a unit is very cheap, but, frankly the cuecat sucked. The range is zero (literally) and the scan reliability was very poor unless you had the dexterity to move the thing across the barcodes at an exact, constant speed every time.

    I got a small box of these from a Radio Shack which was trying to get rid of them, and briefly tried to set up a POS for a client based on the 'Cat. Two weeks of constant phone calls later, I had the client fork over $100 per seat for some medium range one-shot LED scanners and life was good. :)

    Justin

    • Re:Such a deal! (Score:5, Funny)

      by ArsenneLupin ( 766289 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:18PM (#12796460)
      ... briefly tried to set up a POS for a client

      Hmmm, looks like you did ;-)

    • I've got a non-hacked one with a busted PS/2 plug lying around somewhere. When it worked, I got good scans about 85% of the time (into DOS EDIT - I didn't DARE use that CRQ crap). Very rarely, I would get a REALLY weird scan that I couldn't explain...

      Of course, the busted pin being the clock pin, and not either of the NC pins, it makes things REALLY interesting when one tries to scan...
    • In their "convergence day" advertisement, they showed kids being taught how to use the cue cat in the schools of the future.

    • Re:Such a deal! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wwest4 ( 183559 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @04:03PM (#12796765)
      True, these are no good for commercial and retail use. But for home use... not bad, considering the cost barrier drops nearly to zero.

      I use the cuecat for a home inventory system that has saved me tons of time and space. It works really well for disorganized scatter-brained packrats. I'm using some scripting to add bells and whistles (like native cuecat decoding support, integrated webcam snapshots, mysql backend and a tcl/tk front-end) but all that is really required is a spreadsheet with three columns (barcode, description, location), a "spayed" cuecat (hw mod is cheap or free), and a bunch of pre-made 3of9 barcodes, which you can do for free on an inkjet printer and a barcode font.

      The cuecat increases ease and accuracy of barcode entry (and reduces the chance of error) and you can find all your crap after you store it by searching the tables... for me, the biggest psychological barrier to putting things away is not being able to find them when I need them, followed closely by a strong disinclination to high-level storing and filing strategies that most people use. The barcode & hide method sticks to the Keep It Simple Stupid paradigm, and works much better for a person like me.

      • Re:Such a deal! (Score:5, Funny)

        by radish ( 98371 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @04:59PM (#12797195) Homepage
        I'm using some scripting to add bells and whistles (like native cuecat decoding support, integrated webcam snapshots, mysql backend and a tcl/tk front-end)

        The barcode & hide method sticks to the Keep It Simple Stupid paradigm

        You are obviously using some definition of "simple" with which I am not familiar ;)

        • Re:Such a deal! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by wwest4 ( 183559 )
          The point is that all you really need to make it functional is the declawed scanner and a spreadsheet with 3 columns (1 for the code, 1 for the location, and one for the item description). The fact that I'm using it as a springboard for a production-quality system highlights another use of the cuecat -- cheap prototyping. You don't need to splurge right away on a $300 scanner to start working on the software portion of a point-of-sale or warehousing system.

      • So you "save time" by printing barcodes, writing database code, labeling, photographing and cataloging all the useless crap most of us throw away?

        • Re:The Goatse Gourmet (Score:4, Funny)

          by wwest4 ( 183559 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @05:48PM (#12797548)
          Printing barcodes takes 10 minutes.

          3 column spreadsheet - 1 minute.

          Photography - just for fun, but once it was written - no overhead. The barcode scan triggers the camera (using the vidcat command-line tool that works with V4L).

          Yes, it saves me time, because sorting things functionally requires extra time and space, neither of which I have. I just track things by location, which is much easier (for me). I'm not tagging trash... I use freecycle for that. however, I am tagging books, multisport gear, bike parts, the original media in my music and video libraries, and boxes of documents that I will need, but I don't want to lose in storage and end up buying again (I had 10 camelbak bladders. 10!) This isn't meant as an apologia for my admitted lack of organizational skill -- it's a hack that works around my deficiency. So it's probably not for you, but it has literally changed my life, as corny as that sounds. I probably should do a testimonial for squalorsurvivors.com.

        • Re:The Goatse Gourmet (Score:3, Interesting)

          by wwest4 ( 183559 )
          Here's the complete tcl/tk function for the photography, which as you can see did not take long to write (please forgive the formatting):

          proc check_barcode { code } {
          set barcode [ CueCat::Decode $code ] .top.barcode delete 0 end .bottom.entries.code delete 0 end .bottom.entries.code insert 0 $barcode

          exec vidcat -p y -s 640x480 > /tmp/out.jpg
          set picture [ image create photo -file /tmp/out.jpg ]
          set mypic [ image create photo ] .middle.canvas create image 0 0 -image $pi

  • Hmm.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tweak232 ( 880912 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @02:53PM (#12796310)
    "Has IT Marketing learned it's history lesson, or will it forever doomed to repeat it?"

    Has this story already been published years ago or are we doomed forever to keep repeating it?
    • Has this post already been published years ago or are we doomed forever to keep repeating it?

      [/echo]
  • I've never used a CueCat, but I think a barcode scanner that works with my Mac (hence PS/2 CueCats are no good... ) would be great for selling off a bunch of used books i have online.
    • Here [delicious-monster.com].

      Of course, It's 40 bucks plus a firewire camera. and not $0.3.

    • So buy a usb barcode reader. What's the big deal?
    • a barcode scanner that works with my Mac (hence PS/2 CueCats are no good... )

      Others have pointed out the existence of USB barcode scanners. I'd just mention that PS/2-USB adapters can be picked up for $7-8 shipped on eBay, so you could use a CueCat just fine.
      • You would also have to hang a PS/2 keyboard off of the CueCat, the way it works. When I was fooling around with a CueCat on my old laptop, I at least had to hang a PS/2 KB off of it while I booted.

        Oh, and they're pretty rare, but Digital Convergence DID make some USB CueCats for the Mac market...
        • They didn't actually ever make it for the Mac ... at least i don't think the Cue software was ever ported to the Mac.

    • I've never used a CueCat, but I think a barcode scanner that works with my Mac (hence PS/2 CueCats are no good... ) would be great for selling off a bunch of used books i have online

      I got my USB cuecat from IBM. IBM was very hip to the idea of using cuecats for their catalog ordering. It also came with the AudioCue cable which was useless as was only a mono rca to stereo phono connector.

  • Has IT Marketing learned it's history lesson (Score:5, Funny)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @02:54PM (#12796317)
    Interesting marketing concept. Come up with a product and try to give it away. When you find that you can't give it away, offer to sell someone the same thing, but without the Internet backup system needd to use it, for 30 cents each, but they have to buy 500 thousand of them!

  • we used these (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brickballs ( 839527 ) <brickballs&gmail,com> on Sunday June 12, 2005 @02:58PM (#12796341) Homepage
    I volunteer pretty much every year at a local computer tradeshow. I remember a few years back when we started asking for donated cue cats. we used them to track the volunteers.

    Each volunteer had a nametag with a barcode on it.

    Volunteering for a single shift got you into the show for free (definitely worthwhile) volunteering for additional shifts got you some cheep gifts as well - toll kits and t-shirts, that sort of stuff.

    Anyways, the cue cats were pretty useful in reading the barcodes and making the whole thing work easier.

  • hehehe (Score:5, Funny)

    by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:01PM (#12796362)
    from the for-the-well-equipped-home-library dept.

    Yes, because I figure it makes the most sense to have a separate CueCat for each book/item on the shelf...

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:06PM (#12796396)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • So I went and got one for free at Radio Shack when they came out. I plugged it in, got the software, did a couple of lookups, and then threw it some bin where it's stayed since then. What do people use these for? I don't even see a $0.30 value in these.
    • I have three of them -- two PS/2 (different models) and one USB that the RatShack guy swore he wasn't supposed to give me unless I bought a computer. I agree -- they're pretty useless. It's mildly interesting technically, but really...

      The funny thing about hacking the little beasts was that while it was possible to more or less duplicate the official CRQ bar codes, there was little point. It was a bad design and there was nothing the "standard" (i.e. anything but) barcodes could do that couldn't be duplica

  • eBay... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sH4RD ( 749216 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:11PM (#12796430) Homepage
    A quick eBay search (hey, I figured they might make a good scanner to keep track of my CDs, so what the heck) found a strange assortment of results. The first being, that out of 42 results, all but one or two were not "modified to output text without software". What the heck did they do to the actual device to make it always output raw text? The second being the fact that one of the CueCats is a USB model. Did they actually make a few USB ones or is this yet another mod?

    • Answered my own question: Info on Hardware Mod (Score:5, Informative)

      by sH4RD ( 749216 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:18PM (#12796459) Homepage
      Okay, so forget all the complex software listed in the article links. Just hardware mod it! Instructions here: http://www.zapwizard.com/MediaPC/CueCat/Index.html [zapwizard.com].

      Oh, and it seems they made lots of USB CueCats. Strange how people don't seem to talk about those. At least half of them on eBay are USB.
      • As I mentioned elsewhere, RatShack had a policy of only giving them out with new computer purchases. I'm not entirely sure what the deal was with that, but I think it had something to do with discouraging hackers (especially on the Mac platform).
        • Actually, I had a friend who worked at Radio Shack when the CueCat was being distributed free from them.

          The deal was, they only had a limited number of CueCats with USB ports. The vast majority of the units they received to give out were PS/2 models. They had one or two specific models of PCs they sold (as I recall, certain Compaq Presario models) that only had USB ports - so they were instructed to only give away a USB CueCat to a customer who said he/she wanted to use it with one of those particular co
      • And to complete this mod discussion (well...maybe, unless I find something else), instructions on how to mod the USB version: http://www.mavin.com/cuecat/index.html [mavin.com]. Enjoy!

    • Re:eBay... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Nicholas Evans ( 731773 )
      As far as I know (from my googling of hacks for the cat), there is a USB version, and it isn't just a mod, it's an official honest-to-god-peice-of-crap cat.

      And to make it scan normal text barcodes, you have to open up the kitty and pry up a pin connecting one of them chip-looking things to the circut board-looking thing.
      • Not true. There's a fairly simple decrypt transform that was widely publicized during the height of the 'Cat's "popularity" -- I think either Larry Wall or Dave Touretzky was responsible -- that would decrypt the output stream. The resulting output turned out to be a serial number (so your scanning habits could be tracked), an indicator for the type of barcode, and the bar code content itself.
        • Hm... didn't answer the question, did I?

          The 'Cat actually handles over a dozen different bar code formats. The big issue is whether there's any good reason to scan the bar code on your library card (Codabar, probably) or the tags on the back of your latest purchase from Borders (yes, it does scan those, but I don't know what format it is).
      • That's the case for the USB ones.

        On the PS/2 ones, you have to short out a pin on the microcontroller (there's a hole in the board specifically for that).

  • What lesson? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:19PM (#12796463) Homepage Journal
    Has IT Marketing learned it's history lesson, or will it forever doomed to repeat it?
    Which less is that? That you won't get rich with lame ideas? Everybody already knows that one. But when you're looking for that "outside the box" idea that's supposed to make you rich, your lameness meter tends to go on the fritz.

  • Lesson (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Schnapple ( 262314 ) <tomkidd.gmail@com> on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:24PM (#12796500) Homepage
    IT Marketing learned it's history lesson, or will it forever doomed to repeat it?
    What lesson exactly? The flaw in the CueCat concept was this - it was trying to solve a problem that no one had [joelonsoftware.com] - that being the difficulty of typing in web site addresses. This is hardly a flaw of IT Marketing - lots of useless products hit the market.

    Perhaps the lesson is that pumping millions into flimsy ideas is a bad idea. But that's always going to happen - just not in the sort of frenzy with which it happened in the dot-com era, and probably not too easily for anyone for a while. But someone was selling something correctly to get $195 million in VC funding for 265 employees all centered around sending little cats to people in hopes that they'd scan barcodes out of the Dallas Morning News and Wired Magazine.

    I can't help but think that either a) DigitalConvergence had grander schemes in the pipes and this CueCat thing was just to be the first, or b) The DigitalConvergence guys were con artists and the whole thing was a scam to get lots of money from VC's. The 260+ other employees were just pawns in a ponzi scheme.

    • It wasn't just that people sometimes had trouble remembering URLs - it was only usable if you were reading the magazine next to your computer. So the only time you could use it was when you could just as well type in the URL yourself. Also, this was back when most computers were desktops, and laptops didn't have wireless on them, so you'd have to be reading your magazine at your desk, not on your couch or the train or wherever.

    • Re:Lesson (Score:4, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @04:08PM (#12796806)
      Funny article. My favorite part was the scheme that was even more stupid than the CueCat:
      And anyway, what the heck happened to last month's dumb Wired idea?

      About two months ago, Wired magazine had a different technology for going to a URL automatically from an ad. It was some kind of weird thing where you held up the page to your digital camera, took a digital picture, and ran this wacked out software that navigated your browser to the Altoids home page. So now instead of typing 7 letters I have to find my digital camera, turn it on, wait for it to boot up, take a picture of the page, turn off the camera, wait for it to flush its memory to flash, remove the flash card from the camera, take the network card out of the PCMCIA slot, put the compact flash into it's holder, plug it into the PCMCIA slot, find the picture, run the software which I previously installed, oh, don't get me started. It would be a half-hour trauma just to go to the damn Altoids web site, where you can't even buy an Altoids, for heaven's sake. Curious.

  • If you already have one (Score:3, Informative)

    by dark-br ( 473115 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:28PM (#12796522) Homepage
    This [lib.la.us] comes in handy with a lot of hacks and mods using Linux to drive it.

  • I have one (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cytlid ( 95255 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:28PM (#12796525)
    and it's a ps2 ... haven't used it much. My email address got stolen when one of their databases got hacked into, and I've gotten terrible spam at it since. I've had that particular email address for about 7-8 years.

    What I'd really like is to get my hands on a usb one, so I can uh... ignore it like I do this one. If it's sitting in a dusty bin somewhere, least I know the usb one is much better.

  • It's basic economics.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:35PM (#12796568)
    "Psst."

    "Yeah?"

    "Want one of these?"

    "No."

    "It's free!"

    "Don't need it."

    "I'll give you TWO! for free! costs you nothing!"

    "It's a pointless piece of crap, I don't need it, nobody wants one, it sucks, get it away from me!!"

    "Ok, ok, how about 500 thousand of these things? For only $0.30 a piece!"

    "Wow! I'm a sucker for a bargain! Who thought a total piece of crap could be that cheap if you buy in bulk! Give me 2 million!"

  • Have the mods learned their grammar lesson? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shark72 ( 702619 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @03:38PM (#12796586)

    "Has IT Marketing learned it's history lesson"

    Here's A page on how to use the apostrophe in the English language [fsnet.co.uk], and another [write101.com].

  • I've been considering the purchase of Delicious Monsters Library application, but have been putting it off since I don't really want to have to lug everything over to my computer for scanning (via an iView, or some other quick cam-like device).

    I remember when Library was 1st coming out, I read some blog review of it, and the reviewer was talking about how they had a USB Barcode scanner which contained a small amount of memory onboard. This allowed them to wirelessly walk around the house scanning in bar
    • those scanners exist, but i don't know how cheap they are. if you look in the back of any mac magazine there are often little ads for POS (point of sale, not the other meaning) Mac based systems.

      if i remember right you can get scanners for $150. i understand the pen/wand ones are far crappier than the gun ones. though at that price you can buy an isight. it may not work as easily, but it has a lot more uses. maybe ebay has old scanners that will run on OS X? all the scanner really does is convert the code

  • FINALLY (Score:2, Insightful)

    by l00sr ( 266426 )
    I can finally stop imagining what a Beowulf cluster of Cue Cats would be like, and actually build one!

  • Don't need to buy 500K units (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doctor Sbaitso ( 605467 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @04:29PM (#12796967) Journal
    Little known fact: it's possible to buy them in 250K quantities; however, the price then increases to $0.60 each.

  • Cuecat not pointless - hit wrong market (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @04:54PM (#12797149)
    The fundimental idea behind the cuecat was good. Barcodes are everywhere and it seems the next logical step to actually intrigrate with our web browsers to lookup product information. Need more CD-rs, just swipe the bar code off an existing product and poof, you get the same product shipped to you. Catalog ordering seemed less popular for obvious reasons. But commonly ordered supplies... poof ordered in a flash.

    But Digital Convergence decided to use broad strokes rather than hitting a nitch market first as demonstrated by companies like Readerware. Had they decided to start smaller and hit mediaphiles before the general public, this would have at the very least defined an application for their product rather than the unanswered question, "What do I need a bar code reader for". People who actually had an interest in creating a database of what they own who were already hip to the concept of web ordering who would gladly trade their demographic preferences for this service and consider recommendations based on what they buy would be useful feature. Oh look you liked "Tank Girl" might we recommend Barbarella available at your local Hollywood video, click to have it ready when you come in, or order it now.

    So I say no, the cuecat was far from pointless. It was a good idea executed poorly.

    AudioCues are another story.
    • Actually it was a great idea and started to be successful - the company's CEO was the problem - he went through 200 milion in seed capital - I have been told by employees that Plasma screens were plentiful (when they were $15,ooo each) and gold bathroom fixtures were the norm.

      The cuecat marketing was poor only in that it created a problem that sought a solution.

      I believe this was just ahead of it's time.

  • These were free at radio shack...
  • Well it's a good thing Slashdot covered this little nugget. It's not everyday you can get a failing product to turn sales around overnight as a novelty item.

  • Optical Mouse as Barcode Reader? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bones3D_mac ( 324952 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @05:57PM (#12797592)
    Is the technology for barcode readers much different from that wich most optical mice use for position tracking?

    If not, why not create a custom mouse driver that can recognize a barcode when the mouse rolls over one?

    • Re:Optical Mouse as Barcode Reader? (Score:5, Informative)

      by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Sunday June 12, 2005 @08:49PM (#12798535) Homepage
      I was thinking the same thing, until I realized the obvious..

      The mouse doesn't output what it sees, it outputs the same X, Y axis changes as a "normal" mouse (although optical mice are pretty much the status quo nowadays). All the processing is done internally and the results are sent via USB or PS/2 or whatever.

      There may be a troubleshooting mode, or methods for triggering the mouse to output the raw data rather than coordinate changes, but you'd either have to know about them from the engineers, or spend who knows how long sending random signals to the mouse. Also, shifting the burden of processing the images from the mouse to the CPU would likely take up a nontrivial amount of system resources and lower the performance and reaction time of the mouse.

      You could do a hardware mod, of course, but that would be nontrivial as well, and would likely require a custom designed "mod chip" to check for valid barcodes in parallel with the existing image analysis.. hardly worth the effort.
  • "Err, I'd go in for a group order, but I don't need two million at once."
    As if you actually HAD a spare $600,000 just lying around in the first place, right? let alone the $150,000 you'd need to get the discount in the first place.

    I know it's a toss-up between those CueCats or a Ferrari, but...
  • Here's an idea for an interesting CueCat mod. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeow!

    -Don

    The History of the Hello Kitty Vibrator [jmate.com]

    Peter Payne

    Sanrio is one of the top character licensors in the world, having more or less created the business model of doing business by creating something that doesn't really exist and licensing its use to other companies. Sanrio produces nothing -- all their characters, like the Little Twin Star, Minna no Ta-bo, Bad Batz-Maru, exist as legal entities and nothing more. Their mo

  • Well, Mac the Finger said to Louie the King,

    "I got forty-eight red, white, & blue shoestrings,
    and a thousand telephones that don't ring.
    Do you know where I can get rid of these things?"

    And Louie the King said, "Let me think for a minute, son...
    Yes, I believe that it be easily done. Just take everything down to Highway 61."

    Imagine, two-fucking-million cue cats!
    Who made these things? What were they thinking?
    Why didn't they just make 10,000 and see how well they did in the market? Who

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