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CueCats vs. Common Sense Marketing
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.
Yes, but you could make a 1000% profit reselling these once the new world order forces us to be barcoded in satan's name!
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!
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
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Yes, but you could make a 1000% profit reselling these once the new world order forces us to be barcoded in satan's name!
I thought Satan was going for RFID now?
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!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
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...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
No! No! Bolt them onto the heads of the friggin sharks!
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 .
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.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
"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!"
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
"Has IT Marketing learned it's history lesson"
Here's A page on how to use the apostrophe in the English language, and another.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Better yet, give them to the Borg and tell them it's our most advanced technology.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Little known fact: it's possible to buy them in 250K quantities; however, the price then increases to $0.60 each.
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Hello, Slashdot user. My name is Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you.
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?
8==8 Bones 8==8