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....

RIAA, take note

[AntiNorm]

The company is still alive, apparently, but not doing much anymore.

Just goes to show you what happens when a company tries to make its living by suing people.

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

[Skuld-Chan]

not to mention it was hard to scan cue cat upcs. I got one and I played around with it - it was nifty, but eventually it ended up on the floor behind my computer (with all the other devices I never use) because I never really could actually use it for anything useful. 90% of the time you'd scan a can of pop right? And all it would do is take you to their website - think about it. I had to go to the fridge, get the pop, scan it just to view a website - where I could have just sat there on my ass and type in www.pepsi.com.

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!

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

[sharkey]

Just don't forget to shellack it to keep down the smell.

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

[VFVTHUNTER]

I'm "using" mine too. I cut the actual 'cat' off the end of it, wired that to a female PS2 port, and made a nice PS2 Y-cable. Considering it was free and Y's cost $35 at Best Buy, this is great. I love my cue cat!

Not every device is worth billions of dollars

[Faldgan]

One of the problems that a lot of the 'dot-bombs' have seen is that their product is just fine, but occupies a niche that just isn't a large market. I worked for a company that had a half-way decent product, and the revenue of this product could have supported a dozen people, or even twenty or so. But our CEO (who couldn't add 13 and 7 correctly) was hyped, and thought we needed a 100+ employee company, and millions of dollars in investment, and that we could make billions of dollars. NO. Not every product is a revolution. Not every product needs to have a "225-person workforce"
Advice to executives: Don't hire unless you need some work done that your current employees can't handle.

Re:Not every device is worth billions of dollars

[gwernol]

One of the problems that a lot of the 'dot-bombs' have seen is that their product is just fine, but occupies a niche that just isn't a large market. I worked for a company that had a half-way decent product, and the revenue of this product could have supported a dozen people, or even twenty or so. But our CEO (who couldn't add 13 and 7 correctly) was hyped, and thought we needed a 100+ employee company, and millions of dollars in investment, and that we could make billions of dollars. NO. Not every product is a revolution. Not every product needs to have a "225-person workforce" Advice to executives: Don't hire unless you need some work done that your current employees can't handle.

This is right on the money, but remember why the phenomenon has come about. Many, if not most, of the dot bombs were funded by venture capitalists. VCs gamble large sums of money on young comapnies, knowing that only 1 in 10 of them will ever make it to a "liquidity event" (i.e. an IPO or sellout to Microsoft). So those 10% of comapnies that make it have to be worth enough to cover the investments in the other 90% of companies, plus make a big return on the total investment. That, like it or not, is how VCs work.

The upshot is that VCs are not interested in, and won't invest in, companies that aren't going to rapidly (within 5 years) grow to a large size (at least $250 million a year in revenues). The only way to get VC money is to pitch your company as that kind of opportunity. If you go to a VC with a plan to build a small but profitable company, they will politely show you the door.

This is a major cause of ridiculous business plans that have no basis in reality.

If you want to build a small, niche business you can, just don't expect to get VC money to do it - you have to find your seed capital elsewhere; rich friends or parents, huge credit card bills or another mortgage on your house.

Re:Not every device is worth billions of dollars

[RobertFisher]

A lot of the scaling of companies was fed by the desire to obtain venture capital funds, and hence, on the way that venture capitalists operate. A large VC firm might receive say, $500M in funds to partition off to individual investors. They simply cannot manage 5,000 different investments of $100,000 apiece -- once you add up their overheads, and the typical failure rate of a startup, there is no way they could be profitable on such a small scale. So they typically fund a few tens of companies from anywhere from a few million to tens of millions of dollars apiece. The bigger, the better.

Of course, a lot of this had to do with the notion that one had to rush to market to get the most market share, which is an idea that has come to be closely scrutinized today.

Bob

Re:Not every device is worth billions of dollars

[gwernol]

All true, but, surely there is a way to start a company without VC money.

Absolutely there are, and I was trying to mention some at the end of my comment. A good way is to borrow enough money to start your company. Good if you have great credit or rich parents or friends. There are also government and bank small business loans you can apply for. Or you can simply try to live off any savings you have while you try to bootstrap your business. Or any combination of these and other methods.

It seems to me that the CEOs are just as culpable as the VCs. Both are looking to get rich quick. If the original posters CEO was willing to start small and build gradually, they might have survived.

Certainly some CEOs are guilty of this. Many others are genuinely trying to build a business but don't realise just what pressure they will come under from the VCs. And this isn't just about greed and trying to "get rich quick". Most of the CEOs and VCs I've met and worked with are genuinely interested in building strong, successful, viable businesses. But you have to understand the economics of this.

VCs are usually funded by limited partners - typically large institutional investors like pension funds and banks. These limited partners want at least a 100% return on their money, otherwise why not invest in stocks or bonds which have much less risk attached? If VCs invest $10 million in each company, then the 1 company in 10 that succeeds has to make the VCs at least $200 million when it is sold before the VCs get any money back at all. Not many companies command a $300 - $400 million valuation required to generate that return within a few years of being founded.

Only companies that have a real shot at growing that fast that quickly should go the VC funding route. Otherwise, find another way to get your business started.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry

[Zen Mastuh]

From the article (emphasis added in italics...):

The Mark: David Edmondson
Title: President and COO, RadioShack Corp.
Invested: $30 million
Commitment: Manufactured CueCats and distributed them free at all RadioShack outlets.
Quote: "I went, 'Holy Toledo! This is big.'"

Sorry, Dave...

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

[Fear the Clam]

Laugh.

This is the same guy who thinks it's a Good Idea to ask for your address if you just want to buy batteries.

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

[DNS-and-BIND]

Radio Shack, that shining paragon of knowledge that it is...the Cue:Cat was right up their alley.

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: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.

Yeah, look at Rambus

[zerofoo]

Just ask any Rambus shareholder if suing everyone on the planet is the way to increase shareholder value.

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".

Re:Great Quotes!

[sharkey]

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

Or possibly the Avanti or the Torpedo.

Re:Great Quotes!

[technos]

Hey now! No making fun of the Avanti on my watch..

I still think that car was cute.

:Snake:Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

subject says it all

It's not THAT bad...

[SamMichaels]

The CueCat isn't THAT bad...Using CatNip, my business now has free barcode scanners. Thanks Digital Convergence :)

Re:It's not THAT bad...

[elmegil]

But if you saved a copy, you now have a free barcode scanner with no worries. In fact, I'd be REALLY surprised if you couldn't find copies of most of them out there now, given the lack of a threat that D::C now poses.

Re:It's not THAT bad...

[Roblimo]

The threats were silly. OSDN got some cease and desists from Digital Convergence about posting Cue:Cat hacking instructions on Slashdot and some of the bar code reader programs hosted on SourceForge.

Our lawyers and I looked at the whole thing (one lawyer got a Cue:Cat because of a Forbes subscription, no less), we talked about it, and in the end we farted it off.

In essence, these people were sending unsolicited out by mail, then trying to control how recipients used them. Try taking *that* one to court!

Hell, we figured 80% of the things were probably thrown away, and the comparatively few Slashdot and/or SourceForge readers who did something *useful* with theirs wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the world's Cue:Cat (over)supply, but might save a little landfill space.

- Robin

Who's to complain about free hardware?

[jcpii]

I, personally, am happy to have had the chance to see one of my _life's ambitions_ filled... Thanks to Mr. Philyaw, I now own a bar code scanner to catalog my music with.

I spent months trying to find a reasonably priced scanner, and eventually I gave up. But shortly there after, a trip to the local Radio Shack fixed that problem. I consider it a fair deal after all the times I've overpaid for items at that place, that I get a little something back.

Re:Who's to complain about free hardware?

[Ranger]

Thanks to Mr. Philyaw, I now own a bar code scanner to catalog my music with.

Ditto. I cut the trace on my CueCat, thus disabling the serial number, and, wala, I too have a free barcode scanner. Since it's inline with the keyboard, the input from the barcode will be dumped into any window opened for editing. So you can dump raw barcode into, say, Notepad. Most of the barcodes I tried worked.

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.

Forbes sent out 800,000?

[Phrogz]

Describing "The Suckers", the article says:

The Mark: Steve Forbes
Title: Publisher, Forbes
Invested: At least $2 million
Commitment: Sent more than 800,000 subscribers CueCat and software.

I had no idea so many had been distributed. I know there have been lots of geek applications developed for those who picked them up free at RadioShack (people who WANTED them) but nearly 800,000 people got them that perhaps didn't want them?

I wonder what they all did with them...

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?

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.

Re:Cue::Cat

[ncc74656]

I'm waiting on the death of Digital:Convergence to be able to use it without fear of a lawsuit.

For some reason, I'm under the impression that DC has bigger things to worry about right now than whether a geek somewhere is bypassing their lame-ass software to do something that's actually useful with a CueCat.

(FWIW, I never opened the package with the CD. I located a Win2K driver that makes it behave like a normal barcode scanner. It's not a particularly accurate device, though, and attempts I've made at printing barcodes and scanning them back in have been somewhat less than a resounding success...maybe plain paper isn't reflective enough for it. As a result, it mainly sits idle.)

Anyone get the last page? Here is most of it...

[cymen]

"The Dumbest Invention in the History of Computers"

The CueCat was Dallas born and Dallas bred, and it was Dallas' biggest
contribution to the Internet Bubble.

By Glenna Whitley

On Sept. 6, Belo finally ran up the white flag. In a small story on the front
page of the business section, the Morning News announced it was giving up on a
promotion it had hyped more than the paper's recent redesign: a device dubbed
"CueCat" that read bar codes implanted in stories in the News and on sister TV
station WFAA. Invented and distributed by Dallas-based Digital Convergence,
CueCat was supposed to help consumers jump from print to Web without the pesky
trouble of typing. About as useful as an automatic page turner, CueCat's
pointlessness was obvious to everyone, it seems, but the investors who backed
it and the editors and producers who promoted it relentlessly. The game was up
in May when Digital Convergence fired most of its 225-person workforce. Belo
soldiered on for three months-apparently too embarrassed to back down-before
announcing that, in the words of one spokesman, "not every project has a 100
percent success rate."

The Huckster

By Glenna Whitley

Salesman: Jovan Philyaw
Title: Chairman and CEO, Digital Convergence
Bio: Philyaw is a self-proclaimed "luminary figure in the world of direct
marketing." The Digital Convergence web site boasts his past successes,
generating more than $4 billion in business-to-consumer sales for companies
such as QVC, Fingerhut, Home Shopping Network, and National Media. In addition
to Tripledge wiper blades, which supposedly sold $50 million in less than 36
months, Philyaw was the driving force behind Susan Powter ("Stop the
Insanity!") and 1-800-Be-A-Geek, the alias of Internet America, the Internet
service provider whose billboards once blanketed Dallas. He's also the host and
executive producer of Net Talk Live!, which started as a local radio and
television show and is now broadcast on the Web. Digital Convergence invented,
owned, and promoted the CueCat.
Stake: 49.77 percent of Digital Convergence stock
Raised: $185 million
Commitment: To raise and spend more than $300 million to distribute some 50
million CueCat scanners free by the end of 2001, giving consumers a way to get
to web pages without typing in URLs.
Observations: An executive of Coca-Cola said listening to Philyaw made him feel
like his hair was on fire. -June 27, 2001, Wall Street Journal
Huckster Quote: "God loves me twice. Once to give me talent, and twice to grant
me the wisdom to apply it."

The Suckers

By Glenna Whitley

Jovan Philyaw found easy marks among a few Old Media types desperate to play the
New Media game and a certain local retailer desperate to cash in on the
high-tech boom.

The Mark: Robert W. Decherd
Title: Chairman, president, and CEO, Belo
Invested: $37.5 million for 7 percent ownership
Commitment: Mailed more than 360,000 free CueCats to households in North Texas
counties. Began using the technology at the Morning News, several other
newspapers, TV stations, and its many Internet sites.
Quote: "This is not the time for retrenchment. This is a time for well-managed
entrepreneurism, for calculated risk-taking .... It's clearly the time to stay
the course, and soon we will find the path to profitability that consumers are
telling us is there."

The Mark: Steve Forbes
Title: Publisher, Forbes
Invested: At least $2 million
Commitment: Sent more than 800,000 subscribers CueCat and software.
Quote: "[The CueCat] will change the way you use the Internet forever."

The Mark: David Edmondson
Title: President and COO, RadioShack Corp.
Invested: $30 million
Commitment: Manufactured CueCats and distributed them free at all RadioShack
outlets.
Quote: "I went, 'Holy Toledo! This is big.'"

AND MORE WERE BORN EVERY MINUTE...
Mark A. Dacey, president of Adweek magazines, was so "impressed by the
limitless marketing opportunities of the technology" (his words) that he sent
CueCats to all Adweek subscribers... Michael Dolan, chairman of WPP Group,
Young & Rubicam said, "If you haven't seen [Philyaw], it's worth the price of
admission." For Dolan, admission cost $28 million... Bob Guccione Jr. intended
to make his Gear Magazine "the first 100 percent wired magazine by way of the
CueCat"... Meanwhile, David G. Whalen, president and CEO of A.T. Cross,
invested $6 million on a Cross Convergence pen ($90) that not only wrote, but
also conveniently swiped bar codes for the pen owner who happened to be near a
computer and connected to the Internet-and who couldn't type.

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.

CueCat is brilliant compared to their other ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

People always talk about how dumb the CueCat was. Did you guys notice these idiots' other thing, CUETV?!?!?

Here's their proposition:

You pick up this free cable and software from Radio Shack. (yes, they didn't learn from the cuecat debacle)

You bring your computer out of your study and set it up next to your TV (or TV next to your computer) and plug the audio out of your TV to the audio in of your computer using said cable.

Install crazy software on your PC.

Dial up your PC to the internet.

Tune your TV to NBC, and wait....

When a "CueTV Enhanced" commercial plays, at the end of the ad ther is a jarring burst of static. WHOA! My PC just went to the webpage for that ad! THIS IS SO WORTH ALL THE TROUBLE! GOD BLESS DIGITAL CONVERGENCE, THOSE MORONS!

Yes, NBC actually fell for this, for about a month or so this summer (I think June or July) they were broadcasting ads and other stuff with these annoying bursts of static that the CueTV software would pick up and decode and cause your browser to go to certain URLs. That was just about the same time D:C laid off all employees and folded up. It took NBC a few weeks to clean their programming up to get rid of the CueTV pollution after that.

Here's the URL that proves that as ridiculous as this sounds, I'm not making this up.


CueTV! Yay!

The last page: The Reviews

[Phrogz]

"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
"There's not enough benefit to the reader," says Jack Powers, director of the International Informatics Institute. "What's Forbes' proposition? 'Jerk around with your computer wiring and learn how to scan like a supermarket clerk so that we can send you more advertising.' No thanks." --Russell Shaw, Broadcasting & Cable
"...There's no need for it." --Sunday Times, London
"My first reaction upon receiving a complimentary "cat" from Wired: Why do I need this?" --Dave Plotnikoff, San Jose Mercury 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
"Just when you think the money truck has stopped making its rounds--that just any bunch of idiots can't get funded anymore--here comes Digital Convergence Corp., proving that small-timers with small ideas can still convince fools to part with their money." --David Coursey, ZDNet News
"Scanning bar codes in my apartment was a thrill for maybe 15 minutes, after which I decided I had better things to do with my time." --Edward Baig, USA Today
"Now I realized that CueCat did indeed have a use. It's for those times when you are 1) sitting by your computer 2) reading Forbes and 3) feeling an overwhelming sorrow that Forbes advertisers aren't getting enough attention. One swipe with the CueCat and you get another ad! Is America a great country or what?" --John Dorschner, Miami Herald
"The CueCat isn't worth installing and using, even though it's free." --Walter S. Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
"The CueCat is one of those clever gewgaws that would be brilliant if only it performed some useful function. But it doesn't."
--Richard Des Ruisseaux, Louisville Courier-Journal
"The CueCat is a cheapo bar-code scanner that looks like a marital aid." --Leander Kahney, Wired
"As I installed my CueCat, I found myself marveling at the weird assumptions that underpin the whole thing. Do we really need another tool to help us go to web sites? How hard is it to type in URLs, anyway? And for God's sake, who wants to be tethered to a computer while they read a magazine? What planet did these people come from?...The tool is almost impressively useless."
--Clive Thompson, Newsday

Re:The last page: The Reviews

[Technician]

I first saw them ad figured this is a mistake. I contacted Radio Shack and Symbol regarding the limited usefullness of the product. I let Digital Convergance know I already had a bar code scanner. What would be wrong with putting the URL in things with a regular extended 3 of 9 barcode? Wouldn't more people connect and use the scanner if they could also be used for other things? If my mouse could be used on one web page and not for any other program like word processing and spreadsheets, I probably wouldn't have a mouse connected. The same thing applies to a single puropse bar code scanner. They got greedy and wanted every scan to belong to them. It backfired as nobody had a reason to connect them. Giving out scanners and having a website with good content linked to the media may have been useful. (scan your coupon here, or scan for a rebate here) Magazines could serial number coupons in a magazine and this may increase magazine sales if you needed to scan a magazine to get an offer listed on a website. The Radio Shack catalog was a good use of the technology, but it was incompatible with my laser scanner. I didn't want to connect another harder to use scanner just to use the catalog. Online orders could have been easy. View more details by scanning the catalog (done). Fill out order by scanning in needed items (missed). Fill out your shipping info by scanning your shipping label (missed). Typos could have been eliminated from online ordering, but due to the DC software, this type of activity could not be done. All scans wanted to launch a new browser window, or take your browser to another web page. It could not be used to fill out an online form.

I remember back when i thought it was a neat idea.

[motherhead]

A friend of mine was showing me his new quecat, it was sent to him with a Wired subscription. I had asked him what it was good for. he told me me that at the moment not a whole lot, but then mentioned, "ever open up some ancient pentium system and see some old Seagate or Western Digital that has no model number or jumper settings, but it has a little bar code sticker? Wouldn't it be cool to just scan it and have the device page up in seconds?"

"Heh." I remember thinking, I thought that might be a cool little technology stunt.

but that never happened, what happened was they tried to re-educate me on how to watch TV and read a Magazine... hahahahahaha. No, thank you.

G'bye Que...

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!

just think....

[Cinematique]

...if the investors were to have paid off a handful of college student loans or paid their way through college.

maybe one or two out of the thousands that they could have financially supported could have, someday, thought of something much more useful to mankind.

i like those odds better than the whole idea of the cuecat in general.

Re:Linux support of the Cue Cat

[fishlet]

With the linux user base being notorious for not spending a dime, their concentrating on linux would have only brought them down faster

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

[RelliK]

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.

Almost right but you reversed the order. They bought Slashdot et al a long time ago. They stopped selling hardware fairly recently. Turns out anyone can build an x86 box. Even Dell.

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

[sllort]

More info about the personal human assistant concept available here.

You know, those companies bombed so hard, it's hard to find any trace of them anymore. Thanks for the update.

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.

Who invited that gold-plated idiot?

[fm6]

Ah, but why are the VC people throwing money at you in the first place? It's because management realized they'd never get rich running a 10-employee company. It's much easier to get rich running a big company -- even if the company never makes any money!

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.

Good use for scanner, maybe not CueCat

[Pope]

After my Maxtor HD crashed and I lost most of my CD catalogue, I had a decent idea:
Instead of putting every single CD into my computer, having the computer read the TOC and get the info from the CDDB or CDIndex, then ejecting it and repeating til I'm done (I have 600+ Audio CDs), why not just scan the damn UPC? Think how much faster that would work!

However, every single goddamn online CD database refuses to include the insanely useful YEAR field, and that just pisses me off.

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. :)

someone needs to *tell* Radio Shack

[hawk]

THe one by me is *still* trying to give them away . . .

hawk

Re:someone needs to *tell* Radio Shack

[AndroidCat]

Heh, I was cleaning up my download dumping ground yesterday, and wiped the CueCat rogue software. I have too many tech-toys looking for a purpose as it is. :^)

Perhaps cataloging my books might be a use, but I know what books I have. What I really need is something to automatically catalog my VCR tapes. I must have almost two copies of each B5 episode. (Niche Product Alert!) Perhaps something could be done with the Closed Captioning info? Hopefully it wouuld be Open Closed Captioning software.

Re:someone needs to *tell* Radio Shack

[Chelloveck]

(Niche Product Alert!) Perhaps something could be done with the Closed Captioning info?

Great! Now, make it so you have to have an Internet connection to use it (to look up the closed-caption text in the online database) and have it record some additional advertising onto the tape. Quick, patent that sucker and call the VCs!

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot... It has to add MacroVision protection to the tapes you made off the air yourself. Time-shifting is okay, but you'd be depriving those poor artists by making additional copies of those tapes.

Re:You All Suck

[Todd Knarr]

Is this a problem with the public, or simply a failure of your business model? Nobody ever offered you a guarantee that your customers would do exactly what you wanted them to do, after all.

Something businesspeople forget: implementing a stupid business plan on the business owner's part does not imply an obligation to insure he succeeds on the customer's part.

Anyone know anywhere you can still get one?

[arete]

And, I do mean one. Anyone take pity on me?

I wasn't really paying attention to /. at the time, don't live in TX, and don't have a subscription to anywhere that gave them away - so I heard about them late.

great for teaching java class

[ghoke]

Radio Shack gave me ten of the scanners when I asked for them for my intro java class--and someone had kindly posted a java utility class, which I had my students incorporate into some really cool projects. One kid printed his list of bookmarks on his t-shirt as bar codes and wrote a small applet to browse to a scanned site.

I cannot find a better way to catalogue

[Archfeld]

my library. The title, author and publisher is on the bar code, I scan and file, so much better than typing in the 6000 or so books I've collected over the last 20 years. An online index makes it easier to use all around.

Re:I cannot find a better way to catalogue

[plover]

I use this URL
http://www.deBarcode.com/deBarcode/cgi-bin/deBarco de.cgi?barcode=%s&type=U.P.C.%%20A
(where you replace the %s with the UPC-A) to translate my UPC-A barcodes to product info.

However, if you're trying to get "book" information, you don't want to use the UPC at all. You want to use the ISBN, which is encoded in the "Bookland EAN" found on most books. (It's the other barcode, not the UPC barcode.)

Amazon.com makes a very effective ISBN to book catalog database. This URL
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/%s/
does a great job for me.

(Note, that the Bookland EAN is not the ISBN number straight up: you need to decode it. Strip the leading "978" from the EAN, then the last digit of the EAN (the check digit.) You're left with nine digits. Compute the ISBN check digit, and append it to these nine digits, and you're good to go.)

John

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:Top five symbols.

[grytpype]

It's called UTC. Aviation uses it all the time.

Re:Top five symbols.

[istartedi]

X2X "plays", as in P2P, B2B, B2C.

Petfood, people food, pizza, or anything else delivered via Internet interactions that would be more easily and cheaply done via traditional methods. If you like, you can simply substitute the sock puppet as a symbol for this.

Game rooms at the company, despite the fact that every survey, both statistical and anecdotal made it painfully obvious that what most employees really wanted were saner hours and/or more money. Every once in a while I still see pitches from companies bragging about the company game room, so some of them still haven't got the clue.

Stock options I personally had options at 40 for a company that was trading at 60. Company now trades below 5. At least I didn't exercise my options and end up in debt to the IRS.

20-something millionaires For the few who made it, it was great. For the rest of us, we had to put up with all the people who wondered why we weren't millionaires; why we weren't driving Lexi and buying mansions. When the crash came, it actually made a lot of us feel better

Re:Top five symbols.

[djrogers]

Voice-over-IP

Hate to burst your bubble, but VoIP is alive and well. Thousands of corps are saving millions of $$ by running their voice and data traffic side by side. It's not the clunky PC interface software you're probably thinking of though, I'm talking IP hardphones, digital and analog to IP gateways, and PBXs that trunk over IP. Heck, in all likelyhood, on or two of your recent phone calls went over IP and you didn't even know it...

Re:Top five symbols.

[Zeinfeld]

I never heard that Internet time had a 'beat'. I thought it was the ludicrous notion that things took less time in the Internet world. Like I have been doing Web stuff for ten years now. It is still like watching paint dry to see things gegt finished. It took us what? six years to get HTTP 1.1 to RFC.

Push was equaly clueless, make the Web look like the TV, only it won't because there isn't really the bandwidth. People prefer the Web to TV because it is interactive. Interactive means pull, not push. The suits loved push because what they really wanted to do was bombard people with ads and to make the new media look more like the old media they understood.

Voice over IP on the other hand has a real purpose. The current generation is pretty clunky. A modem simply ain't ever going to cut it. But if you have a T1 pipe into your building you can probably send most of your voice data over it without noticeable loss of quality and at zero marginal cost per call.

The real problem with VoIP is the need to connect to the old telco system this is what ENUM is all about.

VoIP on its own is just an arbitrage play. The real value comes from being able to go multi-media so you get voice, video, powerpoint etc. in the same feed, seemlessly integrated with your email messaging system.

Portals were not a bad idea. They have a function. The clueless part was the idea that the portals would be able to extract extortionate monopoly rents from their position. If that was the case the yellow pages would really clean up big, which they do to an extent.

The trully clueless concept I would add to the list is Priceline. At one point the market cap of Priceline was greater than that of all the airlines in the US and Europe combined.

My theory is that fads become big because they tap into some pre-existing ideology that makes the believers in the ideology go 'ahaaaaa' and the rest of us go 'so what?'. So the e-tail fad was driven by the people that think that advertising and taking orders is the major cost of mail order (rather than packaging, shiping and carrying costs for the inventory). The Web would eliminate the costs of mail order Yahooo!.

Push played to the predjudices of self appointed 'mejah' experts'. Internet time to the conceits of the journalists pushing the meme. Portals played to the prejudices of those who thought that they had worked out how to corner the market in cyberspace. Priceline played to the predjudices of people who believe that the only thing that matters is price and the free market is the absolute good.

In each case the fad is ancilliary to the ideology that supports it. The fad is explained to the masses as a means of converting them to the core ideology.

Re:Top five symbols.

[Lxy]

* Internet Time

This HAD to be one of the biggest jokes of the .com revolution. I remember seeing this on 60 Minutes or a similar show. They started off by asking people what time it was in GMT, and when people didn't know they said "it's time for a better system". They were showing off these stupid "internet time" watches and getting people all excited about it. So, the system that the entire science community runs off of that's deadly accurate "isn't good enough", even though it's just plus or minus hours from your time zone. Nope, we need to create a new system and screw everything up.

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

Why no mention of the hack brouhahas?

[grytpype]

It would have been a cool part of this article if they had mentioned that hackers figured out how the device worked and came up with useful applications for it, only to be met with the DC's ridiculous claims that this somehow violated their rights.

We /.ers are all to familiar with it, but the general public may not be.

Re:Why no mention of the hack brouhahas?

[oni]

a desktop version of his list software

his web site makes mention of readerware and that the guy wants $50 for it. that sounds a bit steap. I was thinking this could be the killer app for the cat. If you could scan the bar code on that empty box of Weaties (tm) just before you throw it into the trash, then take you pilot with you to the grocery store and be reminded to pick up a box of Weaties (tm), that would be pretty damn nifty.

if would have to be more accurate than a standard cue cat though I would think.

Voice over IP is unacceptable

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Voice over IP systems cannot provide the level of reliability of conventional switches. Conventional switches very rarely fail and very rarely (if ever) degrade the qaulity of calls. Look at how much less reliable the Internet is than the phone system. How often do you get "host unreachable" and "connection timed out" compared to "all circuits are busy". Phone switches can't just throw away connection requests, but IP routers can drop packets. Note also, that if a phone goes out, it is often a straightforward and rapid fix, but Internet based stuff often stays down for hours or days. Even Slashdot, which has a dedicated support staff and the help of their hosting company couldn't get it running for hours due to a routing issue.

Circuit switching is the only way to go for voice - it is the only way to get good quality service and reliability at acceptable first-world levels.
Packet switching just doesn't cut it.

With packet switching, you could just get a failed connection attempt "connection timed out" and not know where it is broken (without adding additional infrastructre). Phone switches can tell if the next switch or circuit is dead and it can be dealt with right at the spot of failure, and people aren't left wondering where in the network "cloud" the problem lies and why they can't make a simple phone call"

IP technology is not as tried and tested as phone tech. It never will be - phone tech has a head start and an installed base and it is the right tool for the job.

I would NOT feel comfortable in a place where if I needed to call 911, I had to hope and pray that the Voice-over-IP network wasn't down, and that my call would go through instead of timing out or getting a destination unreachable. I could be dead by the time it is fixed.

Re:Voice over IP is unacceptable

[spudnic]

If I read his reply correctly he said that voice over the Internet sucked, but they use it INTERNALLY on their own lan instead of a standard PBX. If used internally you would have control on all IP based portions of the system so if something did go wrong (which would be pretty unlikely) you can fix it immediately.

party lights

[griffjon]

with a bit of a modification (reflecting the light back into the cuecat) they make passable party lights (they daisy chain nicely) for dark rooms.

I used one as a night-light for downstairs (I live in a loft)

These things are great! I got one from every Radio Shack in town, and a few from co-workers with Forbes and Wired subscriptions

I think the distribution numbers are a bit zany. I'd wager that a handful of geeks have 5-10 each from their non-geek friends and co-workers who got 'em in one of their subscriptions.

Coke said WHAT?

[Telek]

One word for you: HYPOCRITES . (good read, go there!)

What about Digimarc?

[Talkischeap]

I recieved a Cue Cat quite unexpectedly, from Wired Magazine one day, and never considered hooking it up to my computer, because I like to read my magazines away from my computer.

However, I did use the nifty patch cord that came with the Cue Cat , to go from my computer sound card to my stereo system, so now I can enjoy my MP3's through my quality speakers.

I wonder if some of you are aware of Digimarc?

Quite some time before the Cue Cat marketing blitz, Digimarc gave away a bunch of Intel CMOS cams, if one agreed to test their "Digimarc MediaBridge" technology for a year.

My girlfriend and I signed up, and got our cams, and each month went to their web site and answered questions about our use of their tech.

Before the year was up, the emails stopped coming, and I haven't heard from them for a long time now. Although they still seem to be in business.

I think their idea was a much better one than the Cue Cat, because it used the cam to "see" links embedded into images (a digital watermark of sorts), and the links were quite invisible.

I discovered two drawbacks to this technology, the obvious being, one needs to be reading their magazine next to their computer. And the other was the lighting needed to be strong, and even, for the links to function at all.

When I'm working at my computer the light level varies all the time, and the MediaBridge needed consistant lighting conditions. This I feel, isn't a "real world" tool for those reasons, good idea though.

Re:I almost feel bad for them.

[AndroidCat]

Don't forget their god-given* right to hack into people's computer and remove anything they think is a copyright violation, and to mount DoS attacks as well.

That's okay, I think it's okay to shoot eBurglers.

* The god is this case is probably one of those Aztec ones involving heart surgery. (Well, it sort of looks like heart surgery -- from a distance.)

Re:Linux support of the Cue Cat

[AndroidCat]

They didn't have to support the Linux user base -- they just had to not sue the people who did provide support. ("Argh .. must control .. +3 cell phone .. of lawyer .. summoning..") Their corporate culture obviously had a few defects in its DNA.

Odd really, lots of companies would be pleased if someone wrote software to support their product, especially if it didn't cost them a cent.

Look at LEGO, pleased as spiked punch! It only got sticky when legal trademark stuff got involved, and they were very polite about it.

The Cue-Cat failure doesn't puzzle me -- Amazon's continued survival, now that puzzles me!

Re:Try 3Com

[technos]

Or Avaya/Lucent.. Last I heard, theirs ran a true blue Unix..

Re:You All Suck

[technos]

I can take free shit from stupid people!

Don't think about it like that. We're just reinforcing the millenia old rule that says 'If your product costs $25 to make, don't sell it to the public for a hair under $40 or you deserve the lynching your creditors are going to give you.'

Re:Interesting uses?

[Talsan]

I work in the housing department at a university in Chicago, and I created move in cards with barcodes instead of student IDs. This way we were able to scan the barcodes to confirm when students arrived rather than counting the cards by hand. --It made things much easier.

The radio station is also setting up a database and wants to use some to help maintain their inventory.

Even failures can be useful!

actual use

[hawkeyeerik]

i print out custom barcodes and use my free cuecat (minus their software) to bring up ms access database records.

Quite Recently

[CaptainZapp]

I read a story in an economy mag about a small/medium company with a gegraphically limited scope, but an attractive product: In essence they have 90% of the Swiss POS card reader market.

During the dot.boom banks approached the CEO and tried to convince him to go public and to distribute the product in the whole European market.

All was ready and set, then after lots of talks and virtually in the last minute, the guy pulled out, because he figured that instead leading his small, but profitable business, he would be dealing in business lunches with share holders and invstors and that didn't appeal to him.

Needless to say that while the bank in question wasn't too happy, he's more then thrilled now, after everything crashed.

Good for him and his employees, I thinkg.

Re:CueCat is brilliant compared to their other ide

[Ed Avis]

The idea of data interspersed with TV broadcasts was done before. From 1981 to 1986 the BBC did 'telesoftware' where programs for the BBC Micro were transmitted on certain Teletext pages. (The teletext system uses the gap between frames (the flyback period) rather than bursts of static interrupting the picture and sound itself.)

Here's an evil thought

[Tassach]

tons of H1-B Visa holders who will take work for 1/3 of what I would rather than go back to their home country

<sarcasm>
Hmmm... the evil unethical voice in my head says to steal a page from the politician's book and use the terrorist scare as an excuse to reduce the number of H1-B's. After all, you can't trust them dar furrinirs. Send 'em all back to Elbonia or Towelheadistan or wherever they come from [maniacal laughter].

</sarcasm>

Gee, it looks like Master Yoda was right: the dark side is easier and more seductive!

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

Personally I lvoe the CueCat

[weslocke]

I use mine constantly to catalog new DVDS (With DVD Profiler... just scan, and it downloads info and cover images from online... took about 15min to catalog about 140 DVDs) and books (With ReaderWare, which uses the ISBN number on the book to pull info from various online retailers.)

One of the most idiotic items ever? Only if you were trying to sell something with it. ;^)