I always appreciated CueCat because years after they failed I bought one on ebay for $2 and used it as a barcode scanner to categorize all my books. Worked great for that. :)

I got one! It still works pretty good as a standard bar code reader. I have it integrated into my library cataloguing software

If you ever find one, here is how to make it work properly (but why would you need it?):

http://zteo.com/posts/sunday-hacking-cuecat-delicious-librar...

That was a neat one.

I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried.

One of those 'oh man great idea ... oh no I don't think it will ever work' kinda situations.

It was very much a fun early mass consumer days of the internet kinda shot in the dark / fun to me.

> I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried.

I think they gave away the readers for free. I had one at one point, and I certainly wouldn't have paid a penny for it. I think they were also the basis for quite a few barcode-based hobbyist projects at the time.

Yes. I still have mine and I didn't pay for it. I don't remember how/where I got it but it was free to me.

In retrospect I see it as ahead of it's time. The idea of "place a computer readable label on things to send you to a special website (etc)" is still alive and used today in the form of QR codes. The hardware problem ended up solved by convincing everyone to carry a computer in their pocket and image recognition, but the central idea is pretty much unchanged.

That's a good observation. The custom hardware solution as the smartphone has enabled so much.

The Dallas Morning News sent them to subscribers with their Sunday paper back when this was a thing, because they realized nobody would buy one. It still failed miserably.

Looks like the creator is one that brought idea to look for bamboo fibers in 2020 ballots. One genius idea after another.

Is this the one by the Cyber Ninjas guy?

He's not the cyber ninjas guy, but he is involved in the big lie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Hutton_Pulitzer#Election_aud...