Return of the CueCat

A few years ago, some insane people gave $100 million to a company called Digital Convergence. The idea? Give away bar code scanners so that people could just scan a code in a magazine ad to jump straight to the advertiser’s website. Oh, and track what all the user scans through a unique ID to build up interesting profiles of people. There were so many things wrong with the idea and implementation it’s a sign of the times that were that they managed to get the thing off the ground and distribute millions of dollars worth of the CutCat cat-shaped bar code readers.

It looks like some of the remaining supply of CueCats has ended up at Surplus Computers. For just $7, you can get your very own bar code reader that was formerly free (Surplus Computers is certainly not going to just give them away!). I actually have one of the original free ones sitting on my desk, with a pleasant red glow coming out of the cat’s mouth.