CueCat | Hacker News Reader

CueCat

en.wikipedia.org

64 pointschris_wot60 comments

The CueCat actually has a connection to the Oak Island Money Pit (http://www.oakislandmoneypit.com/).

The inventor of the CueCat, J. Hutton Pulitzer (formerly J. Jovan Philyaw) is prominently featured on the tv show The Curse of Oak Island and claims to have found a "magical" Roman Sword off the island's coast: http://www.inquisitr.com/2704626/oak-island-roman-sword-j-hu...

Factoring that the CueCat lost investors $185M I think it would be fair to say that it's also a "Money Pit".

I remember when these first came out. There was a lively small hacker scene around these, with people "declawing" them so they could be used as regular keyboard wedge barcode scanners. When Digital Convergence folded, I got my buddy at Radio Shack to hold aside a bunch for me that were never distributed. So I had a box of like 15 of these things. I think I still do somewhere.

Around 2004 I was helping out with a first-year science fiction convention and we needed barcode scanners for the art show and convention store but couldn't afford to buy really nice ones on a shoestring budget. So we used CueCats. They're slow compared to the nicer flash scanners, but worked pretty well. :)

Every time I see a QR code, I think of CueCats and wonder if anyone actually scans them. Seems like that "fad" has started to fade recently.

> Every time I see a QR code, I think of CueCats and wonder if anyone actually scans them.

http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com

Am I the only one who doesn't see any pictures, people, scanners, or QR codes? Or am I not getting the joke, because maybe no one scans QR codes?

Yes, that is the joke.

Okay... But to be fair there are valid uses of qr codes. In the last month I've used them for my vr giggles (easy method for registering your specific vr set with some certain vr software) and for going in concerts (qr code saved in iPhone wallet app)

I had a similar reaction. I like the joke the site is making, it's well done. I had a good laugh the first time I saw it, and I've shared it with friends. Jokes are often huge exaggerations though.

QR Codes definitely have valid use cases, and I'm wondering if they aren't also somewhat 'ahead of their time'. They are useful ways to transfer contexts in the physical world. VR, and especially AR (Augmented Reality), is about combining the physical world with the digital one.

I'm imagining a future where not very many people "see" QR codes, but rather have AR devices like we have cellphones now, and they simply see the relevant content in place over the QR code or similar. I think of use cases like glancing down the street at a bus stop, seeing live updates of a NCAA bracket on a poster on the wall, those sorts of things.

I think a lot of the problem with QR codes is simply the friction of using them. I could see them used much more if you could simply open a website by literally pointing a phone at them (e.g. without any setup, opening apps).

When we have persistent AR at all times, the friction could be non-existent, you already see the information in place.

There's also the possibility that location and motion tracking are good enough that they can always be virtual, but I feel like the real world reference and 'binding' cues are important. We'll see how things unfold.

«I think a lot of the problem with QR codes is simply the friction of using them. I could see them used much more if you could simply open a website by literally pointing a phone at them (e.g. without any setup, opening apps).»

Partly why about the only case where I've found QR codes particularly useful is the Xbox One with Kinect. Voice command "Xbox Use a Code" and then hold it up for the Kinect camera, maybe walk it forward a bit. Not a lot of friction and Xbox One QR codes almost all mention the "Xbox Use a Code" voice command. (Remembering the days of the Xbox 360 where nearly every game had at least one packed in code and you typically just typed them in with the soft keyboard and your gamepad, the Xbox One QR codes are a genuine improvement if you have a Kinect, though at this point in the lifecycle pack in codes seem a little less common and digital only purchases a more common preference for myself.)

Opening a QR app is much faster than typing my WPA key.

I see tons of QR codes. No one scans them, but I see them all the time.

They've been around for many years, so that makes me think that someone is using them. I would be surprised if they weren't tracked like hell.

I use QR codes at a local parking garage to pay for my car occupying a specific spot. That is the only useful thing I've seen done with them.

I never see QRs in the US, but they're all over the place in Japan. Not sure how much they get used still.

http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ is one of my favorite sites on the internet.

Google Cardboard has the best use of QR codes I've seen recently - they convey the config for device. You scan it with your phone instead of having to enter the values by hand. Because they're printed on the device, you're not searching for those config details when you use it with a new phone six months later.

I hear they're big in china.

http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/01/31/more-chinese-mobile-ui-...

My office put up signs with a giant QR code and "Lost?" The QR code links to a web page with a map.

Why not just post the map?

I assume it was because QR codes are futureish and someone claimed this was innovative

Because the map might change in the future. You can keep the link the same, but update the content.

Or print a new map?

Because you can't take that map with you.

no but you can take a picture of that map

However you can't zoom, adjust layers, and make queries of a picture of a map. Ideally you would have both. Print the map... Put a QR to the enhanced digital version in the corner.

Because maps often need updating. What you're saying is kind of like saying "why have a link when you can just copy the page directly?"

Or a short URL to the map.

I remember the Digital Convergence guys -- they were actually an infomercial company who did a show, "Net Talk Live!" (punctuation and all) that was targeted at the AOL set. Their other product was something called, IIRC, "Concerto," which was an app that required you to connect your PC's mic-in to your TV, whereupon you would occasionally hear an ear-blasting squelch of noise during Friends, and your PC would suddenly send your browser to a webpage. It wasn't exactly a graceful user experience.

You could argue that they were just too far ahead of curve from an engineering and core technology perspective -- wavelet fingerprinting techniques and Shazam were still far in the future -- but I also believe that the CC's failure is instructive in its own right; by attempting to piggyback on existing media without recontextualizing their presentation and consumption, you ended up with a user-hostile experience that added no value for either the consumer or the creator.

I'm pretty sure my local tv station WFAA would integrate this into their news broadcast year ago. After the news anchor would finish their story, they would pause and you would hear the tone play. If your computer was setup it would take you to their website to read more about the story.

At least i think i remember this, it was a long time ago.

Edit :

Yep i remembered correctly.

"WFAA is the first TV outlet to introduce the broadcast application, on-air audio cues that send PCs immediately to relevant pages on the Internet without consumer intervention..."

http://adage.com/article/news/cuecat-kindles-controversy/566...

Tangential note: Shazam was launched in 1999.

"fails to solve a problem which never existed."

Yeah, I got one of these in the mail, but couldn't make it work. Also could never figure out what it was for, really. Saved me some keystrokes in my browser? Apparently, the value was too skewed towards the advertisers and marketers, with too little value for consumers to be adopted.

QR code readers are effectively the same thing, as far as I can tell. I never find myself using those either.

At least with QR codes you don't need a special scanner, it doesn't need to be plugged into anything and you have the scanner (phone) with you all the time.

But I've never used one either.

But you kind of do, because as far as I know, you need an app. QR codes has some major promise initially, but it hinged on becoming built into the camera apps of phones, which never happened, so forget it

If you're security conscious, you might use QR codes for MFA, i.e.: https://userify.com/tour/ (scroll down)

but then Red Hat's FreeOTP has a QR code scanner built in. (Google Authenticator does not and needs a third-party one that wants a ton of permissions..)

IIRC they also had a special microphone (or probably just a regular microphone with some software) that could hear URLs from TV commercials and send them to a browser. I'm not sure if that ever worked, but it sounded a little too Orwellian for me.

I still have my PS/2 version one somewhere. Was a great way to catalogue books and DVDs back in the day.

Amusing to see some of the same mistakes being made now by Augmented Reality platforms. If I have to download a proprietary app in order to interact with your advert, I'm probably not going to bother.

The difference now, as opposed to back then, is the proprietary apps are lead capture or advertising delivery platforms.

The CueCat is infamous. Joel Spolsky had a great take on it:

  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html

Best quote: "The number of dumb things going on here exceeds my limited ability to grok all at once."

I got one at Radio Shack but never did much with it. I think it went to recycling some time ago.

I thought of Joel's article immediately. The funny thing is though that it's now trivial to have a "CueCat" on your smartphone. In a vague way, it was a great idea. It was just too far ahead of its time.

The "Legacy" section is the interesting part, along with the quote: "You have to wonder about a business plan based on the notion that people want to interact with a soda can"

QR codes are still slapped onto everything, but I doubt that they are used much. It's the same logic, only with phones rather than a dedicated barcode scanner. Why do manufactures think that people would want to scan QR codes?

This blog explains it better than I can: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/

Nest uses it as part of their application setup process for Nest Protect. Of course, it's completely broken because their app doesn't bother to focus the camera while trying to read the QR code. So then you have to enter the code manually into their app, which is also broken because they use a font that doesn't distinguish between 1 and l, which just magnifies their initial error of using codes that include 1 or l.

I've had an iPhone for 5 years, an android 3 years before that, and I still have no idea how I'm supposed to scan a QR code. Does any arbitrary QR reader app work for every QR code? Is QR scanning natively supported in any way?

> Does any arbitrary QR reader app work for every QR code?

Yes, basically.

> Is QR scanning natively supported in any way?

No idea for every phone, but not native to Android or IOS AFAIK. Probably Google Goggles, but that's not built-in usually. We recommend FreeOTP for MFA at Userify[1] (plug: SSH key management) which has a built-in QR code scanner/reader, but Google Authenticator needs a specific third-party (and permission-greedy) app.

1. https://userify.com

I also use FreeOTP, but be aware that it stores the keys in plaintext.

That was the reason I chose it actually - it gives me a way to encrypt and back up my codes in one fell swoop - but it is definitely a risk to be aware of on a rooted device.

It's natively built into Windows 10 (for certain less technical descriptions of "native"), but you'll have to ask Cortana if anyone knows that, much less knows how use that.

Yeah, the use cases are pretty slim. Link to your app on a flyer or in a location I'm going to be interested in it is the one use case for QR codes I might have used multiple times, but in general that also is a sign of the inability to create a nice short-link instead.

Sometimes the apps are useful for barcodes that are already there: I sometimes scanned ISBN codes on books that look interesting in the library or in stores, and used book sellers have apps where you simply scan the books you want to sell and get the price.

All in all, QR codes scanned with a phone are not that much nicer than typing something to be that valuable, even if you've found something I actually want to interact with. Start the app, find a position where the code is in the frame and the camera can focus, wait to focus, wait to decode the code and display the result, do something with it... takes quite a while as well. Normal barcode applications work so well because the scanning hardware/process is fast.

Here in Finland invoices have QR codes. You can set up a payment automatically on the due date through a your bank's mobile app. This is probably the only time I've actually scanned one.

I've seen QR code being read when people access WhatsApp through it's web client. I haven't seen other successful use cases as such.

I've done this, and used them for Google Authenticator.

I work on an Open Studio Event for artists. We wanted to see if people used the QR codes we put on posters etc, so we linked to a different landing page (mobile friendly).

Very very few did use them. Probably not worth the printed space.

CueCat was funded under one of the late 90s trendy buzz-concepts: media bridging. The idea was that there would emerge ways of linking new and old media.

Of course the obvious way was to print a hyperlink, but evidently investors thought people would rather scan barcodes.

Like many late 90s goofy ideas, it did resurface in a more successful form later: the QR code. But that had to wait until everyone had a little handheld smart terminal.

"The CueCat was invented by J. Jovan Philyaw, who changed his name to J. Hutton Pulitzer"

This line made opening the wikipedia article more than worthwhile!

I just googled "J. Jovan Philyaw", and the first link is a transcript of his interview. Oh boy

http://jhuttonpulitzer.blogspot.com/

Surely I'm not the only person with a box of these in storage, just in case I need a bar code reader in the future? :)

Short discussion, 7 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=720435

I've got a handful of these in a drawer at home. I remember rushing to RadioShack to get one as a kid with such excitement. Followed by disappointment that there wasn't much to do with it. I picked the other ones up at the Goodwill soon after.

My computer at the time if I recall had the big DIN connector instead of PS2 so I had to get a DIN->PS2 and a PS2->DIN connector to put this thing inline with my keyboard.

I got one for free by paying for a lifetime account at LibraryThing. (Don't know if they still do this - I signed up 7-8 years ago.) Supposed to make scanning barcoded/ISBNs easier, although Ive never used it. :)

The creator (Dave Mathews) talking about it on ThisWeekInStartups (2011) https://youtu.be/Z8Tczfk1saQ?t=359

I have one of these on my desk. I have fought the Linux kernel drivers for it for far too long and now it is just here as a red light in the night.

Heheh. I have one of these in a box at my parents' house. I had forgotten entirely about it.

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