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CueCat Patent Granted, Finally
RobertB-DC writes "Who could forget the :CueCat, the amazing device that would bring 'convergence' between the real world and the online marketing Utopia of the late '90s? Belo, the Dallas-based newspaper and TV conglomerate, spent millions of dollars on the project, only to be ridiculed from the start and eventually becoming a sort of poster kitty for the Dot-Com Bust. Well, the device's inventor and chief cheerleader, J. Jovan Philyaw, didn't forget. His patent application, in progress since 1998, has finally been granted. The story comes from a Dallas alternative weekly, since the local Belo paper is still smarting from its $40-million-dollar black eye."
and write the book ":CueCat for Dummies"? I'll be an instant millionaire!
So, the cueCat was in a box (the patent office) and its state was unknown for years until someone finally opened the box and looked at it? I can only assume the cueCat was dead, but that assumption probably changed the outcome.
First again?
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Anyone thinking that getting a patent will make a broken concept work is naive.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I declawed one with the software patch that stripped the 'encryption' to use it as a normal barcode scanner. It was great for a little inventory problem I had at work. I made an Access DB that kept track of LTO tapes by scanning a label on each box and tape. That way when I had to do a restore from tapes on hand all I had to do was pull up its label in the DB and it gave me the box and row number.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
A barcode scanner at every normal person's PC that "allows" them to view advertisements on products they've already purchased? Count me in!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Clearly, this one got approved via the Patent Office's rule that "If you can't decipher the run-on sentence, approve the patent".
Yeah, I know the patent rules pretty much require run on sentences, but Claim 1 here is ridiculous even given that.
Best I can tell, Claim 1 covers doing a lookup of a code at a remote site and receiving something like a URL back, then following that URL. The code has to have been received before the user connected to the network.
That is, if I set up a server which returns a redirect for "8972" of http://www.cat.example.com/ and "1513" to http://www.dog.example.com/ and I send you (via US mail) "8972", which you then enter at my site and get redirected to the cat site, the patented method has been used.
Does anyone know if I can still pick these up for free at Radio Shack? I remember having a stack of them but my Grandma threw them away because she thought they were pens that were defective. No, really, she did.
Criminals will no longer break into a home and leave with nothing because there isn't anything worth stealing!
The plastic bag that my copy of Wired came in had a big hole in it when it got to my house. The CueCat was either stolen or it fell out.
Technoli
What do I do with the box of these that a frustrated Radio Shack manager gave me?
I went in asking for one and he told me I can't have one unless I take his entire inventory of them. I ended up with dozens of them.
On a side note, I then went to the bank and asked for a dollar, but they didn't give me a boxful of them... no fair...
Awesome! I still have a brand new unused CueCat in my desk drawer next to me right now! My ship has come in! ...I think. Wait, what's going on here?
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
Ummm....Most authors only get paid if their books actually sell...(Hence the reason JonKatz lives in abject poverty.)
My blog
I've still got a few laying in my spare parts box, unhacked. Do I have to pay a patent fee to use them, now? ;^)
it looks like a sex toy
all its good for anymore
i guess
i said i guess!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Am I the only one who read the headline and then burst out laughing?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I find my CueCat useful for LibraryTHing to where you just scan and go.
Though the OLD system was actually a big huge bundle of adware, however considering that's gone down the tubes, it's now nothing more htat handy barcode scanner.
I understand why and how this idea failed, but I think that it had such a great deal of potential. Not for flashy things like electronics, but for mundane things like office supplies. Rather than digging around Corporate Express's web site or typing in a list of part numbers, how much easier would it be just to use the CueCat on a barcode printed in the catalog? I was kind of disappointed that the worthwhile, vaguely interesting applications for this technology never materialized.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
Geez I guess it has been that long. I was one of the first to figure out that it sent a coded mix of letters and numbers with the scanned barcode inside so that it could be hacked to function as a proper barcode scanner. I also was one of the first to get a certified cease and desist letter and a followup call by one of their attorneys.
I still have a bunch of both the serial and USB versions wrapped and new... however now they would actually have proper legal grounds to prosecute so I won't be redistributing my code online again :)
Never thought I'd see :CueCat come up again on the 'ole Internets.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Still available, a web page to decode the cat. http://www.logorrhea.com/cuecat/cuecat_decode.html
1011 1010 1101 1100 0000 1111 1111 1110 1110
A bit offtopic, but with the aforementioned "hack" to enable it as a more generic device, a friend of mine uses it to catalog his book, CD, and DVD collection. He has a whole spreadsheet for his books that tells him how many pages, how long it took to read, his overall "review" (couple of sentences) of the book, etc.
A bit anal retentive? Yes, but I could see it being useful for making a record of just about any "collection" you had that already had barcodes on it.
Hmm. This is the same thing the CompareEverywhere app for Android (G1) does.
http://compare-everywhere.com/
Is the patent broad enough to ace these guys out?
Mir tut es leid, Menschen daß Einfältigfehlersuchenbaumfolgendenaffen sind.
I remember being the first to publish the basic decoder for the CueCat... got a nice little writeup in Wired, which led to a nice little writeup from a Kenyon & Kenyon lawyer in the form of a C&D.
Highlight of my sophomore year in HS: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7222&cid=835493
Their patent claim is interesting -- launch a web browser when an item is scanned. Sounds like it shouldn't meet the non-trivial requirement to me, but I'm not in IP law anymore...
If you look at the "Related Applications" section, I see something like a score of issued patents in this family, give or take a few. So this is not anything like the "real" :CueCat patent. This is a continuation-in-part, meaning they are adding new matter to the original application (some incremental improvement, usually). Apparently, these guys are intent on patenting every little incremental improvement they can think of for their famous failure. Why? Are they stacking their portfolio with an eye to future litigation? If true, that's the real story.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
your bot is fucked...fix it
Oh no! Are you saying that the book that I read "Writing Dummy Books for Dummies" was inaccurate on how much money I can make?
funny. I just found mine in an ancient box last night and drug it out to play with it. how timely.
that no one else can _EVER_ make this thing again?
*fingers crossed*
Joking aside, I do see many practical applications for a device such as this, as long as the software that comes with it is better than the bloated, ad-ware infested stuff that came with the original.
--Chris
--Coming up with something clever... please wait...
It works great. The computer thinks it's a keyboard. When I swipe a barcode it types the digits and hits return at the end. Who needs software?
That way People will know what obscure piece of tech trash you are rambling about.
I, for one, welcome our new self-aware clawing CueCat overload.
the cuecat was awesome, I still have 2 of them, and I actually still use them. Such an awesome little gizmo! There are some cool programs out there that work with it too!
I'm not a patent attorney, so understanding the legalese of these things isn't my strongest point - so I could be entirely mistaken. However, taking the abstract:
"A method for interconnecting a user's location to a destination location on a network. The unique information is received at the user's location, which unique information has no associated routing information embedded therein. Network routing information is associated with the received unique information in response to receipt thereof. The user's location is then interconnected to the destination location across the network in accordance with the routing associated therewith in the step of associating. "
Sounds very much like it would cover such things as the use of a mobile phone to read a barcode and compare prices online.. which I am sure I read about existing somewhere?
"It fails to solve a problem that doesn't exist."
I can't remember where I read that, but it sums up the entire thing perfectly...
Do you have ESP?
This is big.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
And I got one of the early ones that could be turned into regular scanners by cutting a trace.
This news prompted me to drag out my two :Cats and decrypt the output on them, so I can finally use them as raw scanners. I dug out the copper trace to pin 10 of the Hyundai IC on both of them and, voila, it outputs raw numeric ASCII data whenever it spies a barcode. I've had archived details on how to do this for years, but never got a round tuit (those tuits are pretty scarce and hard to find in their own right). Turns out I Googled the part number on the PCBs and found several pages detailing the process for that specific PCB.
I remember those, when they first came out, they seemed stupid. It solved a problem for an advertiser, but never solved anything for the end user. Doomed to failure.
Plus, in the install instructions, it gave instructions on how to reset your BIOS settings if it wasn't recognized. You expect someone to reset BIOS settings to use something not really useful? Whatever.
we used one at my last place, a 'declawed' one was a useful cheap barcode scanner for books.
You should have looked at the book next to it on the shelf, "Reading about Writing Dummy Books for Dummies". It explained in great detail that it's usually a bad idea.
The Internet is generally stupid
Why do I get the feeling that the :CueCat could find new life as a support peripheral to some stupid new Facebook "application"? "Here are the barcodes from everything in my room! L0lz!!1!!"
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
It takes effort and attorney's fees to keep a patent idling for ten years. This is a classic tactic of ne'er do well patent attorneys used to keep 'before their time' ideas in the patent process until they can be used to make money. This has become a patent after 10 years for one of two reasons: 1) They think there is a big fish to extort/sue now 2) They are tired of paying attorneys
It's a great little barcode scanner for simple jobs. I keep track of books and DVDs with it. Where I work we have a rather sizeable library and we purchased a barcode scanner for the same purpose that cost upwards of $150 ... and it doesn't really work any better than the declawed cuecat.
A hot feature of the G1 phone is the ability to take a picture of a UPC and go to web pages to find other places that item is on sale. This patent, for a handheld device that scans a bar code and then links to a website - just like the G1 phone - could result in huge moolah from Google.
If the whole point of a patent is to give someone exclusive rights to their invention for a limited time, why do we have a system that takes 10 years just to get a patent at all?
Are these excessive "patent pending" periods part of a ploy to lengthen the "limited time"?
I believe that the company would make some good money if they marketed the device to hackers and encouraged them to tinker and play with it by making it customisable and the software free.
You can use a Cue Cat for zapping books into LibraryThing, the social book-cataloging site. It's a lot faster than adding everything manually, and it works even if encryption hasn't been disabled.
I bought a USB model for a whopping 10 USD. Then I declawed it by severing the fifth leg from the left on the bottom of the microchip, using a pair of fingernail trimmers (full declawing instructions (pdf), scroll down to page 5). It works nicely in Windows and Linux, no drivers, and I can zap pretty much any barcode and get the actual text read out. It's surprising how often you can zap a barcode into Google and get highly relevant search results.
So, basically, the company's business model may have been crap, but as a cheap barcode scanner their hardware ain't bad. Aside from the dumb encryption part, and the cat shape is silly.
Few things are as pathetic as someone posting "Did I get first post?" when they did not, in fact, get first post.
Delicious Library, Hold any CD, Book, VHS, DVD, UPC symbol in front of any webcam, built in, cell phone pic, and it organizes all your media. http://www.delicious-monster.com/ Written by a guy who never knew who he loaned stuff to. Gorgeous and lickable GUI. I think they patented the software... but a UPC?
I'm very confused. I read several of the posts and they all mention having to declaw/hack the CueCat to make it work as a barcode scanner. Mine worked out of the box. I just plugged it in, grabbed the nearest barcode, scanned and got output to my terminal window. No hacking required, no drives. This was on Slackware Linux. I got mine from the local RadioShack. Am I missing something?
Charles Wyble System Engineer
Aahh... this brings back great memories! Back in High School, a mate and I cleaned out a couple of local radio shacks, made minor hardware mods to the beasts, and sold them on eBay. This was a great entrepreneurial experience!
-Palal
I submitted a project similar to, but much better of course ;-), than CueCat for Google's 10 to the 100 challenge...
Animoog.org
The Cuecat is still tremendously useful for the folks at librarything. My wife has one and it has proven a real timesaver given we have about 2000 books or so on our shelves
http://www.librarything.com/cuecat
So perhaps in some instances it has a real and viable purpose?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I'll never forget the day a few years back, when visiting a local Goodwill, and noticing that one of their "premium" items (the ones locked in a case, which folks with half an IQ point would recognize as being worth somewhere between dick and squat), was a Cuecat, for $2.75 no less. Even more ironic is that a few years earlier, they were being handed away for free at a Radio Shack.
So keep an eye open, you might own a piece of nonhistory from a nonprofit (hah!) for a few bucks.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Really? I guess the movie had a different ending than the book.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
LibraryThing sells the :Cue:Cat for fifteen bucks to its users to make entering book info easier by scanning the barcode off the books. (Of course, for the really old stuff, you still need to type it all in.)
Digital Convergence didn't have a bad idea, but as seen with the various database software, they might have enjoyed better luck focusing on the a nitch first.
Take their model.
Q: What do I use this thing for
A: To scan your soup cans
Q: Why the fuck would I want to do that?
A: To visit the website and so we can collect demographic information
Q: Why don't you fuck off?
Good idea as barcodes are everywhere, certainly handy, but for your average consumer, they didn't do this in the first place. They want to know more about their soup, they can type in the company name in google, no big deal.
But you start talking to people about indexing their book, CD, or video collection, well, there you go! Consumer gets their DB, DC gets their marketing information. Then perhaps as a side one could index barcodes with company names.
They also had a semi-decent idea promoting urls within broadcasts. The states doesn't use teletext, and that would be rather handy. But this was like the late 1990s. You sort of needed to have a TV with audio out, or a tuner/vcr with a free audio out. And who would want to make run from their VCR to their PC just to collect URLs?
But as far as I can tell, Digital Convergence was just a company out to get venture capital and go bankrupt ASAP.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
No need to hard hack them, just do a search for, and download catnip, it decrypts the output and they can be used to read all sorts of barcodes. I got three of them a few years ago and they are great for inventory, etc. as well as cataloging items at home such as dvd's, cd's even tools and stationery if you print barcodes on them.
I had one of these. Got it free from Radio Shack like everybody else. You took it home, plugged it in, installed the software and then you could scan a can of peas for instance and it would take you to delmonte.com ... And then you started to think why do I need this?
The encryption on it was really lame. You could get around it with a soldering iron or a few lines of code(freely available on the web). They came in two flavors, PS2 and USB. They made great little barcode scanners for home cooked inventory systems.
Is this because the EXACT finctionality of the cue cat is duplicated in the new G1 phone with varied programs like Shop savy? They scan a barcode then go online and give you the best prices from several big retailers.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Jeffry Jovan Philyaw = J. Hutton Pulitzer http://www.metafilter.com/25103/Pssssst-Hey-buddy-Wanna-buy-some-crystals
Cuecat was a device that could scan a bar code and send you to a related website. Ditto Android G1. If someone has a patent on it, will they sue Google? Interesting thought
Ashraya
LibraryThing lets you auto-catalogue your book collection by typing in ISBN numbers or using a CueCat to scan the books, and there are a bunch of other sites that let you do similar things with CDs, DVDs or anything else that has a barcode.
Eric Baird
Actually, this patent kinda sucks, because mobile hardware and software is getting flexible and robust enough to actually make CueCatish behavior useful.
No, I don't mean "Oooh, an ad for Coke! I wanna go to their website now!"
I mean "Shit, is this the right kind of semisweet dutch processed chocolate for that cake my wife is making? I'll IM the UPC to her and see... "
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love