Hucksters, Suckers, and the Cue:Cat

Someone in the Know writes: "Now that it's almost completely over for Digital:Convergence, D Magazine (Dallas) unveiled the investments and the suckers surrounding the Cue:Cat and its creator J. Jovan Philyaw. I especially liked the Coca-Cola executive's observation: "... said listening to Philyaw made him feel like his hair was on fire". This was passed around ex-employees and we all got a kick out of it. The company is still alive, apparently, but not doing much anymore."

Comments

Land for Sale

[bowb69]

Now if I could only get them to invest in some real estate in Florida....

symbols

[Frizzled]

the cue cat has to be one of the top five symbols of the dot-com era (or, atleast up there with razor scooters). you have to wonder who thought this gizmo up though ... who reads magazines in-front of the computer?

now - if there was a wireless version that worked in the bathroom, they'd be millionaires right now

_f

Re:symbols

[darsal]

now - if there was a wireless version that worked in the bathroom, they'd be millionaires right now

Oh but there is...

I got a Symbol 1502 keychain scanner for the cost of shipping from "VAR Reseller" magazine. Got the SDKs from Symbol's site, and now I'm scanning wherever I feel like it.

Turns out, I don't feel like it much. Could be 'cause it wasn't free (as in beer) so there hasn't been a groundswell of hackerly support, and I'm on my own figuring out how to hook it into existing databases.

Could be 'cause there just plain isn't all that much I want to scan in the bathroom.

(I -did- figure out that a buddy's dorky bar-code tattoo is the UPC off a box of tampons...)

I'm using my cue cat...

[hartsock]

as a door stop. It truly changed the way I used the internet... my office is cooler!

Re:I'm using my cue cat...

[Grape Shasta]

I use just a standard cat for this and it works perfectly well. I don't need one of these fancy hi-tech models!

Great Quotes!

[Dr Caleb]

From the article:

Philyaw is a self-proclaimed "luminary figure in the world of direct marketing."

An executive of Coca-Cola said listening to Philyaw made him feel like his hair was on fire. --June 27, 2001, Wall Street Journal
"It fails to solve a problem which never existed." --Debbie Barham, The Evening Standard
"Are these folks kidding?" --Sandra Brown Kelly, Roanoke Times & World News
"You have to wonder about a business plan based on the notion that people want to interact with a soda can." --Jeff Salkowski, Chicago Tribune

Was this the "Edsel" of the Internet age or what!

Re:Great Quotes!

[Accipiter]

Personally, I liked this one:

• 
  "...not every project has a 100 percent success rate."
  

Well, if their plan was to get people into Radio Shack to take home a CueCat, they succeeded admirably. I have eight of them in a box in my closet.

Of course, their marketing effort failed miserably, considering they're going to be looking for "Robert April", "Christopher Pike", or "William Riker".

:Snake:Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

subject says it all

Question

[ocie]

"listening to Philyaw made him feel like his hair was on fire"

Being an engineering type and not a marketing type, does having ones hair set on fire represent a good thing?

Re:Question

[sharkey]

does having ones hair set on fire represent a good thing?

Seemed to work for Pepsi. Or was it Coca-Cola? Go ask Michael Jackson to find out for sure.

Cue::Cat

[The Diver]

I have one but never hooked it up. I'm waiting on the death of Digital:Convergence to be able to use it without fear of a lawsuit.

Infomercials

[Accipiter]

Anyone remember those dumb-ass infomercials that Digital Convergence ran during the CueCat's inception days?

They were set in a classroom something like 200 years in the future. The teacher was telling the class about the wonderful beginnings of "convergence" - the era in human history (heh) that saw the merging of barcodes with the internet. It changed human existence forever, and made the world a happier place. The kids were asking questions like "What happened before 'convergence'?"

"Ha Ha, silly little student...They had to TYPE their URLs in...By HAND!"

The actual quote was something like "a long time ago, people had to get around on the Net by typing in each individual character of a Web address manually!"

Future's gonna be a bit different than expected, eh Jovan?

They had another infomercial with angels ranking the CueCat up there with the wheel and fire, but for the sake of good taste, I won't go there.

It never passed the "Wife Test" (tm)

[shreak]

All technology has to pass the "Wife Test"(tm) even if it's Open Source.

True Story:

[Wife is in office finishing up finances with Quicken]

[Enter Husband with "great" idea]

Husband: Hey, hon! Look at this stupid thing I just got from Wired. I found some software on the internet that will let us hack it to scan stuff and record the UPC codes.

[Wife's productive work preempted by husband interrupt. Wife visibly reworking priority tables while "listening"]

Wife: So?

Husband: Well, when we go grocery shopping we can scan all the stuff before we put it away and maintain an inventory so we know how much stuff we have and .... nevermind.

Re:It never passed the "Wife Test" (tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that kind of "Wife Test". I thought you were just referring to the "marital aid" aspects of it.

I don't get it.

[po_boy]

What's all this talk about no one using the Cue::Cat? I was just sitting here watching a video on Betamax, drinking an RC cola, and scanning stuff with my Cue::Cat. It seems pretty useful and timely to me!

No Stupider than other late computer companies

[UltraBot2K1]

Okay, so we all knew Cue:Cat was a stupid idea. But there were plenty of stupider ideas. In the recently burst tech bubble, *everyone* was getting VC funding.

I've personally know of several even more ridiculous concepts that have received funding. Here are some of my (least) favorites:

• MyExtremeFuneral.com - This was a company that planned to profit from the demises of dot-com executives involved in extreme sports. They resold life-insurance at inflated prices and custom pre-designed funerals. In addition, one of their selling points was that they'd maintain a web-page/shrine to the deceased in perpetuity. Unfortunately(ha!) they laid off their 250(!) workers and went under 1 month after their $12 million first round funding came through.
  
• KittyLitterCorner.com - Yes, they sell (*sold*) just what you'd guess from their name -- but they did it over the internet! And they were there first, which earned them close to $20 mil in VC funding. KLC.com is no longer with us, needless to say.
  
• PHuMAss.com - Phumass (Personal Human Assistant) catered to the busy e-business executive with real, living, human assistants -- accessible via the web. Forget your PDA, with PHuMAss, you have a real live person (stationed in a cubicle in South Texas) to assist you, take care of your schedule, do your errands, etc.; all accessible through a convenient CGI interface anywhere you have a web connection; all for $299.95/month. RIP Phumass.
  
• VA Linux Systems - Rode the Linux bubble up with one of the biggest IPOs in history. Sold off their core money-maker (the hardware business) and instead acquired liabilities such as various linux-oriented community sites. Plans to make its money by selling a piece of software that can be downloaded free from the web. VA is currently on the verge of being delisted, and bankruptcy may soon follow.
  

These are just some of the cases I was personally involved in (I do due diligence for investment banks). As you can see, Cue:Cat is not that anomolous.

Re:No Stupider than other late computer companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I know about the first 3, but you've *got* to be making the last one up - certainly no VC would finance a company like that!

Re:No Stupider than other late computer companies

[ajm]

PHuMAss should have done the smart thing and employed convicts to be personal digital assistants. That way they could have paid them next to nothing and made larger profits. In fact, by recasting the work as training in useful skills they could probably have got money from the state/government to pay for the people as well as charging the customers. If the scheme takes off just use some of your profits to lobby for increased hacking penalties and you'll be assured of an endless supply of workers.

Re:No Stupider than other late computer companies

[technos]

I take it you've never owned a Dell?

Re:CueCat is brilliant compared to their other ide

[jms]

Here's an excerpt from the CueTV FAQ

Question: Why would you be using your computer and television at the same time.

Answer: You are probably watching a television program, and surfing the web during commercials.

Question: Why would I want to install CueTV?

Answer: After installing the CueTV software, you won't be able to use your computer during commercials,
because the software will keep interrupting what you are doing to send you to advertising sites.

Shush!

[drinkypoo]

I was hoping they'd bring out a new Cue:Cat that was one of the gun-type barcode scanners. Then again, my mind recoils when I try to figure out what the trigger would look like.

What's really scary...

[Pollux]

the cue cat has to be one of the top five symbols of the dot-com era

I should have gotten one from Radio Shack. Not only would it have been free, but I could have probably sold it ten years from know on eBay for hundreds of dollars, when everyone else, who was too dumb to see it's true potential as a collector's item, threw it away.

Re:What's really scary...

[egburr]

I've got an extra one, still in its unopened bag. If you want it, I'll sell it to you for $50 now. If your prediction is right, you'll still make a good profit off it. :)

Top five symbols.

[big.ears]

My personal top 5 favorite stupid ideas of the dot.com era:

• The CueCat
  
• Internet Time (A new universal time metric. Each 'beat' was about 80 seconds long, if I remember correctly. It was even on the titlebar of CNN.com for a while.
  
• Push technology, incarnations 1, 2, and 3.
  
• Voice-over-IP.
  
• Portals.
  

Re:I don't know whether to laugh or to cry

[geekoid]

haha
So dave thought "I'll invest 30 million in a product that we're going to give away"
I actualy had a money making idea, with experienced management,a business plan, and a succesfull marketing test, but I couldn't find an investor to save my life.
I really just don't understand business

Re:Interesting uses?

[StaticLimit]

The night "Enterprise" premiered, my TV was still in the garage, and we didn't have cable. My wife and I rushed to assemble a cabinet we got for the TV and hooked it up, but all we got was static.

"We need an antenna!", sez I. But we only had 15 minutes before it started, and where can we find something that will fit into the cable jack on the back and be a long, conductive thing...

We tried an old phone cable, but the wire inside was crap (one tiny strand braided with nylon or some crap), so I pulled out the CueCat... *snip* *snip* *strip* and I had a wire that fit right in, a long cord to act like an antenna... and a little cat-scanner-thing to set on top of the TV, which happened to be the position that gave us the best reception.

- StaticLimit

Re:Forbes sent out 800,000?

[Howie]

The part about the CueCat that amused me was that in thepack you got from Radio Shack (sent to me in the UK by a friend - hi Bob!), there was a subscription offer for Forbes, and some other magazine I don't remember. To get the offer, you go to a website, and type in a 10 digit number - you don't do it by scanning a barcode. If you do use your Great New Idea, then who the hell else is going to?

Re:I don't know whether to laugh or to cry

[AndroidCat]

Quote: "I went, 'Holy Toledo! This is big.'"

Umm Dave, it only looks like a marital aid.

Re:Too bad.

[plover]

Someone else got "sold" on this neat technology:

IBM.

The catalogs I get from their enterprise group all have :CueCat barcodes on them.

Just when you thought IBM was going to grow a clue...

John