The ’90s cutest PC failure tried to interchange URLs with bodily media

The ’90s and the ’00s had been certainly one of a form, and this is not simply my millennial nostalgia peeking by right here. In the tech international stage, they had been most definitely particular, as a result of they had been full of daring, courageous, usually ineffective improvements which will have crashed and burned, however will probably be remembered longer than the same-y laptops and smartphones we get yearly now.

Useless, daring, and courageous? Well, I do not find out about courageous, however CueCat, a little bit plastic cat that you simply plugged into your PC, is definitely a memorable piece of retro tech. And sure, even on the time, it was fairly ineffective.

The plastic cat that wished to make the web clickable

Why sort a URL when you possibly can scan a barcode?

What do you consider once you assume again to the ’90s and ’00s period of tech? For me, every little thing being clear is certainly up there. Those outdated Macs, Game Boys… But other than that, it is largely that producers again then did not appear to be afraid to take any probabilities. These days, if a smartphone maker strays from the standard mixture of black, white, gray, and beige, it is broadly celebrated as a refreshing transfer. Back then, that wasn’t so uncommon. We even noticed bizarre kind elements, just like the CueCat.

But the CueCat was greater than only a weirdly-shaped gadget. It was a barcode scanner that plugged into your PC by its PS/2 keyboard port. The concept was easy: magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and advertisements would function particular barcodes you possibly can scan along with your feline good friend. If this seems like a QR code, you are actually not far off.

Once you scanned one thing, the accompanying software program would then open the related webpage in your browser. Basically, hyperlinks with further steps (and a cat).

CueCat was made by a Dallas-based firm known as Digital Convergence. The concept appeared good on the time, and I see the attraction, I do. Typing lengthy URLs wasn’t precisely enjoyable; it nonetheless is not. But CueCat did not merely learn an internet tackle. It scanned the code to Digital Convergence’s servers, which figured the place to direct your browser.

You wanted a devoted scanner and particular software program, plus an web connection. All of that would’ve been completed along with your keyboard and 10 seconds of your time.

Millions of individuals received a free cat they by no means requested for

Even Wired, Forbes, and RadioShack received concerned

This entire idea might have sounded much less questionable again then than it does now, however nonetheless, you’d assume it might have struggled to get off the bottom. But this was the dot-com period, and apparently, something was doable.

Digital Convergence managed to draw some fairly severe traders, together with Coca-Cola, RadioShack, and General Electric, elevating round $185 million in funding. That’s an unlimited sum of money to throw at a plastic cat, however the firm had even greater ambitions. It wished these kitties to look in hundreds of thousands of houses, and to make that occurred, it gave them away free of charge.

It truly labored, no less than so far as distribution was involved. Forbes mailed CueCats to round 810,000 subscribers in 2000, Wired joined in, and RadioShack handed them out in shops. Impressive adoption, though not likely by selection.

Unfortunately, proudly owning a CueCat did not equal truly utilizing one.

The supposedly handy shortcut made every little thing more durable

You might’ve simply typed the URL and been executed with it…

I’m certain this stood out to you, too. The redundancy of all of it was maybe the largest downside for CueCat.

It tried to make one thing tremendous easy even simpler, however this was a time after we all had PCs with keyboards, so there was nothing stopping us from merely typing that URL into the tackle bar. Meanwhile, with CueCat, you needed to join the system, set up the software program, and have that printed barcode inside attain.

All of that simply to go to a web site? Cute because it was, this feline accent by no means stood an opportunity.

Your cute little cat got here with a nasty privateness shock

Every scan might be related to a singular system

As if the entire idea wasn’t questionable to start with, it additionally got here with some fairly severe privateness considerations.

To use the official software program, you needed to register and hand over private info, together with your identify and e mail tackle. We’re all used to that now, after all, however none of it’s wanted simply to go to a web site (normally).

Worse nonetheless, each scanner had a singular serial quantity that was transmitted alongside the barcodes you scanned. Digital Convergence might probably affiliate your exercise along with your id. According to The Register’s reporting from 2000, the software program had every little thing it wanted to construct detailed profiles of customers’ scanning habits. It’s type of like what your router can do proper now.

Hackers gave CueCat a greater goal earlier than it disappeared

The cat was extra helpful with out its authentic software program

As is typically the case, CueCat ended up having a totally completely different goal than the producer initially deliberate for. Hackers rapidly discovered methods to repurpose it to learn peculiar barcodes, and that allowed individuals to catalog books, CDs, and even groceries.

Some additionally discovered methods to disable the distinctive serial quantity transmitted with each scan, a course of that was delightfully dubbed “declawing.”

Digital Convergence did not love all these unauthorized makes use of for CueCat, but it surely had greater issues on its fingers. By 2001, the corporate was falling aside, and CueCat vanished.

The concept wasn’t solely horrible

As we scan QR codes left and proper now in 2026 (regardless of points like quishing), it is laborious to not understand that the concept itself wasn’t horrible. CueCat made sense, however maybe not in 2000. It’d have made considerably extra of a splash now when used with fashionable tech, I’d think about, however again when everybody was typing away on their keyboards, what was another URL?