The '90s and the '00s were one of a kind, and this isn't just my millennial nostalgia peeking through here.In the tech world, they were most certainly special, because they were filled with bold, brave, often useless innovations that may have crashed and burned, but will be remembered longer than the same-y laptops and smartphones we get every year now.Useless, bold, and brave? Well, I don't know about brave, but CueCat, a little plastic cat that you plugged into your PC, is certainly a memorable piece of retro tech.
And yes, even at the time, it quite useless.The plastic cat that wanted to make the internet clickable Why type a URL when you can scan a barcode? Close What do you think of when you think back to the '90s and '00s era of tech? For me, everything being transparent is definitely up there.Those old Macs, Game Boys...
But aside from that, it's mostly that manufacturers back then didn't seem to be afraid to take any chances.These days, if a smartphone maker strays from the usual mix of black, white, grey, and beige, it's widely celebrated as a refreshing move.Back then, that wasn't so unusual.
We even saw weird form factors, like the CueCat.But the CueCat was more than just a weirdly-shaped gadget.It was a barcode scanner that plugged into your PC through its PS/2 keyboard port.
The idea was simple: magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and ads would feature special barcodes you could scan with your feline friend.If this sounds like a QR code, you're really not far off.Once you scanned something, the accompanying software would then open the relevant webpage in your browser.
Basically, hyperlinks with extra steps (and a cat).CueCat was made by a Dallas-based company called Digital Convergence.The idea seemed brilliant at the time, and I see the appeal, I do.
Typing long URLs wasn't exactly fun; it still isn't.But CueCat didn't simply read a web address.It scanned the code to Digital Convergence's servers, which figured where to direct your browser.
You needed a dedicated scanner special software, plus an internet connection.All of that could've been accomplished with your keyboard and 10 seconds of your time.Millions of people got a free cat they never asked for Even Wired, Forbes, and RadioShack got involved This whole concept may have sounded less questionable back then than it does now, but still, you'd think it may have struggled to get off the ground.
But this was the dot-com era, and apparently, anything was possible.Digital Convergence managed to attract some pretty serious investors, including Coca-Cola, RadioShack, and General Electric, raising around $185 million in funding.That's an enormous amount of money to throw at a plastic cat, but the company had even bigger ambitions.
It wanted these kitties to appear in millions of homes, and to make that happened, it gave them away for free.It actually worked, at least as far as distribution was concerned.Forbes mailed CueCats to around 810,000 subscribers in 2000, Wired joined in, and RadioShack handed them out in stores.
Impressive adoption, although not really by choice.Unfortunately, owning a CueCat didn't equal actually using one.The supposedly convenient shortcut made everything harder You could've just typed the URL and been done with it...
I'm sure this stood out to you, too.The redundancy of it all was perhaps the biggest problem for CueCat.It tried to make something super simple even easier, but this was a time when we all had PCs with keyboards, so there was nothing stopping us from simply typing that URL into the address bar.
Meanwhile, with CueCat, you had to connect the device, install the software, and have that printed barcode within reach.All of that just to visit a website? Cute as it was, this feline accessory never stood a chance.Your cute little cat came with a nasty privacy surprise Every scan could be associated with a unique device As if the whole concept wasn't questionable to begin with, it also came with some pretty serious privacy concerns.
To use the official software, you had to register and hand over personal information, including your name and email address.We're all used to that now, of course, but none of it is needed just to visit a website (usually).Worse still, every scanner had a unique serial number that was transmitted alongside the barcodes you scanned.
Digital Convergence could potentially associate your activity with your identity.According to The Register's reporting from 2000, the software had everything it needed to build detailed profiles of users' scanning habits.It's kind of like what your router can do right now.
Hackers gave CueCat a better purpose before it disappeared The cat was more useful without its original software As is sometimes the case, CueCat ended up having a completely different purpose than the manufacturer initially planned for.Hackers quickly figured out how to repurpose it to read ordinary barcodes, and that allowed people to catalog books, CDs, and even groceries.Some also figured out how to disable the unique serial number transmitted with every scan, a process that was delightfully dubbed "declawing." Digital Convergence didn't love all these unauthorized uses for CueCat, but it had bigger problems on its hands.
By 2001, the company was falling apart, and CueCat vanished.The idea wasn't entirely terrible As we scan QR codes left and right now in 2026 (despite issues like quishing), it's hard not to realize that the idea itself wasn't terrible.CueCat made sense, but perhaps not in 2000.
It'd have made somewhat more of a splash now when used with modern tech, I'd imagine, but back when everyone was typing away on their keyboards, what was one more URL? Related This simple setting doubled my mouse's battery life, and I'm not sure why I didn't try it sooner I no longer have to constantly charge my mouse Posts 1 By Monica J.White
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