CueCat - Misplaced Pages

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Introduced as the FIRST consumer scanner, the CueCat (trademarked :CueCat) was a cat-shaped handheld barcode reader. The CueCat™, CueCode™ and the CRQ™ technology behind it was developed by J. Hutton Pulitzer (also known by the one word moniker "Jovan", in the spring of 1992 and was launched to much fan fare in the fall of 1999. The device, was designed for both tethered and mobile commerce, but was originally introduced in it's connected connected form factor for use on computers using the PS/2 keyboard port and USB. The CueCat enabled a user to direct their web browser to a website for a product by scanning a proprietary patented barcode — called a CueCode™ or "cue" by Digital Convergence — appearing in an article or catalog or on some other printed matter. In this way a user could be directed to a web page containing related information without having to enter a URL. In addition, to the tethered CUECAT device, the software drivers used to operate the CueCat also worked on an Broadcast Audio Signal, TV broadcasters used an Audio CueCode™( audio tone in programs and/or commercials ) that when, attached to a computer (via an audio cable) will instantly direct their computer to the webpage being covered or sponsored by the broadcaster, i.e. remotely controlling the viewers computer through the television broadcast.

The CueCat device communicated to desktop "CRQ" software running on Windows 32-bit and Mac OS 9 operating systems. Users were able to register to their zip-code, gender and a valid email address so they could receive specific promotions or coupons related to their scanning activities, if desired. This registration process within the software enabled the device to deliver relevant content to a single or multiple users within a household. The systems that employed this registration process are no longer on the Internet and codes cannot be generated in order for the software to be re-installed today.

Pulitzer turned away by numerous manufacturers, needed to find a solution for a consumer based scanner solution. So in order to gain fast and widespread adoption of his invention and wanting to develop a cheap alternative to scanning. Pulitzer achieved this idea by engaging the support of along his long time sponsor of his Television Talk Series, Net Talk Live! , RadioShack. RadioShack being already familiar with Pulizter’s marketing efforts and successes, readily agreed to help develop a cheap free scanning solution. Early in its development, Pulitzer approached Tomo Razmilovic, the former CEO of Symbol Technologies, with his pitch for using barcode scanners for linking products in the physical world to the virtual world through the Internet. Symbol and it’s CEO readily dismissed Pulitzer’s idea for scanning to connect to the web, and refused the idea that a scanner could be made for less than $1000 a unit and could not be given away for free, and that new proprietary forms of barcodes which could be patented could ever be created. Additionally they believed to do such would harm the existing high-end scanner market and in which Technologies was the market leader. The relationship between Digital Convergence and Symbol became almost immediately adversarial.

Server reports and data submitted to the SEC, in DigitalConvergences bid to do an IPO, show that ver 1,000,000 Internet users went into their local RadioShack stores picked up and installed a CueCat within the first 30 days of release making it one of the fastest growing and adopted technologies of all time. Currently, CueCat and its technology, which launched the scan to connect and scan to conduct commerce development platform, have seen a revival almost 10 years after its introduction and 19 years after after Pulitzer’s first test and prototypes, and almost 2000 apps have been developed using CueCat and its scanning capabilities. Those who now use CueCat to scan and run simple apps can utilize third-party software to decode the lightweight encryption employed within the device.

Introduction

Digital Convergence Corporation
Company type	Corporation
Industry	Electronics
Founded	Dallas, Texas (1998)
Headquarters	Dallas, Texas
Products	peripheral devices, Software
Number of employees	1,250

Sample CueCat barcode

In early 2000, advertisements, special web editions and editorial content containing CueCat CueCodes (aka. "cue", CueCode™ or QCode) appeared for more than a year in many high-circulation U.S. mass-market periodicals, notably Parade magazine, Forbes magazine and Wired magazine. Commercial publications such as AdWeek, BrandWeek and MediaWeek also employed the technology. The CueCat CueCodes also appeared in select Verizon Yellow Pages, providing advertisers a link to additional information. RadioShack published their product catalogs containing these CueCodes, and even distributed CueCat devices through their retail chain to customers at no charge. CueCats were also to subscribers of technology magazines, notably Forbes and Wired. Starting in October 2000, The Dallas Morning News and other Belo-owned newspapers added the CueCodes next to major articles (Belo had invested in Digital Convergence) and regular features like stocks and weather. The mailings of Cuecats were sent to subscribers of various publications as a gift from various publishers and as a “Thank You” for their business. Numerous Publishers participated in the launch of the CueCat and this added to the 1,000,000 users of the CueCat device almost immediately. DigitalConvergence provided free CueCats to certain large Publishers and at a reduced cost to smaller publishers. Each publisher was responsible for its own mailings and this mailing was done, due to the books and software in the package at the Media Mail mailing rate offered by the United State Post Office, thus saving millions on Sponsors mailing costs.

The bars on a CueCode are tilted 22.5° to the left, both for proprietary Ownership and Trade Dress reasons , to avoid Lemelson parallel barcode patent concerns and as a Patent Warfare Strategy developed by Pulitzer, to create a atmosphere of “Willful Infringement” by competitors to the DigitalConvergence and CueCat Technologies. This strategy meant, if CueCats CueCodes were made readable by any device other than the DigitalConvergence approved devices, they would have to hack the internal code and software, proving the use of Digital’s proprietary technology. Such hacking or reverse engineering, would then backfire against a competitor and open them to immediate “Willful Patent Infringement” lawsuits by DigitalConvergence. This patent edge, and the shear vastness of the Pulitzer Patent Portfolio, later forced all companies engaged with Scanning to connect to deal and/or license with DigitalConvergence and Pulitzer Patent Portfolio.

The data format was proprietary, being scrambled so as not to be usable as plain text. However, the CueCode (proprietary barcode) itself somewhat resembled Code 128, and the CueCat was also capable of reading EAN/UPC, ISBN and other symbologies. This intentional design allowed CueCat to become the ONLY scanner in the world able to read all existing bar codes, all past types of bar codes and all future types of bar codes yet to be issued. The software for decoding the CueCat's output quickly appeared on the Internet, followed by a plethora of unofficial applications and many of these applications were encouraged by DigitalConvergence before its untimely demise.

":CRQ" (a play on "see our cue") is software developed by Digital:Convergence intended to convert Audio CueCodes™ or Audio QCodes or "cues" from television signals and the :Cuecat reader into URLs. The television technology was launched on NBC during its "Must See TV" programming and used a computer sound card to decode an audible CueCode™ and collect or launch a web site.

Revered and Reviled

At inception and announcement, CueCat, DigitalConvergence and Pulitzer were heralded throughout Wall Street and Hollywood and attracted huge named investors such as Steve Forbes and Steven Spielberg, but when the company closed shop (coming from both the tech world and publishing world combined) CueCat, DigitalConvergence and Pulitzer became heavily reviled (history shows the same such fate and the same revile and rhetoric plagues famous Inventors such as Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Wilbur and Orville Wright and Nikola Tesla).

Accolades

In the year 2000, the Smithsonian - Computerworld Honors Program, in consultation with its Chairmen and Laureates, , advisors from academia and the IT industry, various diplomatic corps, began to disseminate its annual collection of primary source materials of technology and innovations that change and positively impact the World to National Archives, State and University Libraries, Research Institutions and similar repositories around the world. To date, 134 institutions are actively engaged in the preservation, protection and dissemination of these materials and have been designated Members of Honors Global Archives and Academic Council. CueCat, DigitalConvergence and the Patents and Ideas of J. Hutton Pulitzer are part of this now famous archive. In 2001, CueCat, DigitalConvergence and J Hutton Pulitzer, the Inventor, was awarded the coveted Smithsonian – ComputerWorld – “Search For New Heroes Award”. Notable voting members who voted for the coveted award to be awarded to CueCat, DigitalConvergence and J Hutton Pulitzer included Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Carly Fiorina, Lou Gerstner and Larry Ellison, to name just a few. CueCat, DigitalConvergence and J. Hutton Pulitzer also won the coveted Codie Award. The SIIA CODiE awards recognize excellence in the business software, digital content, and education technology industries. All nominated products and services receive a thorough review from seasoned industry experts who can identify strengths and give significant insights for improvements. In 27 years, SIIA has recognized more than 1,000 companies for achieving greatness in industries that expect innovative thinking and demand market validation.

Detractors

The media outlash over the CueCat device, the company DigitalConvergence and Pulitzer himself, took on a life of their own. Even with Pulitzer being nominated the JD Powers “Entrepreneur of the Year” and the attracting of a record breaking technology device adoption of 1,000,000 initial device users and creating the largest barcode database ever created (and linked) the CueCat in its initial concept was branded by the media a commercial failure. It received the dubious distinction as one of "The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time" according to PC World magazine. The CueCat's critics said the device was ultimately of little use: wrote Jeff Salkowski of the Chicago Tribune, "You have to wonder about a business plan based on the notion that people want to interact with a soda can," while Debbie Barham of the Evening Standard quipped that the CueCat "fails to solve a problem which never existed." In December 2009, the popular gadget blog Gizmodo voted the CueCat the #1 worst invention of the "2000s" decade.

Hindsight

Now scanning to connect to products, offers and the web are commonplace and available in almost every connected device. Thus, the idea and technology of Pulitzer succeeded and now may employee as many as 20,000 employees global in the business of (1) scan to link (2) scan to buy (3) scan to inquire and (4) scan to connect/support), thus proving the consumer adoption, business adoption and the viable business model created by Pulitzer. However, the malicious press attacks on both CueCat and its Inventor Pulitzer and the idea of scanning to connect was further bashed and thus additionally marred by DigitalConvergence’s unfortunate security compromise.

Controversy

CueCat was initially controversial, because of privacy concerns raised over its collecting of aggregate user data, Each CueCat has a unique serial number, and users suspected that Digital Convergence could compile a database of all barcodes scanned by a given user and connect it to the user's name and address. However, DigitalConvergence did not keep such combined information, but did have a security leak when a tech employee left with a development computer connected to an unsecured Net connection and was hacked. A small amount (5%) of DigitalConvergence’s users records were stolen. For this reason, and because the demographic market targeted by Digital Convergence was unusually tech-savvy, numerous web sites arose detailing instructions for "declawing" the CueCat — blocking or encrypting the data it sent to Digital Convergence. The site digitaldemographics.com was also registered through Digital Convergence, and was the division of DigitalConvergence responsible for attracting brand companies to the technology platform. Although DigitalDemographics did not release users personal identification information, it did make available how many “bottles, boxes or bags” of a consumer product were scanned within any given week, similar to the data collected at the average grocery store level. The database utilized the unique serial number within each device to determine the viability of deployment through retail, magazine and other distribution partners. Any data collected was aggregated anonymously much like other serialized and identifiable devices such as TiVo have been employing since 1999. The company's response to these hacks was to assert that users did not own the devices and had no right to modify or reverse engineer them. Threats of legal action against the hackers swiftly brought on more controversy and criticism Hackers argued that the thousands of users who received unsolicited CueCats in the mail had not agreed to nor were legally bound by the license. No lawsuit was ever brought against "hackers," as this tactic was not employed to go after specific users or the hacker community specifically, but to show "reasonable assertion" that would prevent a corporation from developing integrated software within an operating system or browser which could take over the device and circumvent the CRQ watchdog software and therefore revenue model that Digital Convergence employed.

Security Breach

In September 2000, security watchdog website Securitywatch.com notified Digital Convergence of a security vulnerability on the Digital Convergence website that exposed private information about CueCat users. Digital Convergence immediately shut down that part of their website, and their investigation concluded that approximately 140,000 CueCat users who had registered their CueCat were exposed to a breach that revealed their name, email address, age range, gender and zip code. This was not a breach of the main user database itself, but a flat text file used only for reporting purposes that was generated by ColdFusion code that was saved on a publicly available portion of the Digital Convergence web server. Subsequent reports and internal investigations showed that less than 50,000 users information was actually compromised out of a user base of just over 1,000,000 activated Cuecat devices. Digital Convergence responded to this security breach by sending an email to those affected by the incident claiming that it was correcting this problem and would be offering them a $10 gift certificate to Radio Shack.

Continued Availability

The CueCat itself is still being sold on secondary marketplace sites like Amazon and eBay. The booklover social networking site LibraryThing sells USB CueCats to aid with scanning ISBN barcodes for entering books into the site and a whole community of apps which have developed many uses for the CueCat scanner have appeared over the years. In June 2005, a well known electronic liquidator purchased at the bankruptcy asset auction the remaining Cuecat un-distributed inventory. The liquidator purchased approximately 2,000,000 CueCats at a price of $20,000 for the entire lot of device (purchasing the device at a liquidated cost of $0.01 cents each) and subsequently the liquidator offered two million CueCats for sale at $0.30 each (in quantities of 500,000 or more). Currently, on eBay, one can purchase a CueCat for an average BUY NOW price of $9.99 and the original sponsored distribution kits, private labeled and mailed to customers by such companies as RadioShack, NBC, Forbes, AdWeek, BrandWeek and others, have started being offered on the Tech Collectors market for as high as $50 for an intact Branded CueCat Offering Kit.

Defunct Company

Digital Convergence and the CueCat system are generally assumed to be defunct, the Digital Convergence website remained as a ghost site. The website has contained the following statement: The dream was to connect items in the physical world to the Internet, automatically. In January that dream hit a bump in the road and the servers were taken offline. They will scan again… If you have a Cue Cat, save it. The patents and technology created by Digital Convergence will again be available for business and consumer use. Currently the website contains information about the device, its history and information on the company licensing the resulting intellectual property which numbers more than 115 granted US patents. Currently, as of October 2011, Pulitzer Patents are being award at the rate of almost 1 patent every two weeks.

Legacy

Videos and Deal Memos float on the Internet showing how Pulitzer was in negotiations with Microsoft and others to tie CRQ into Internet Explorer and make Cuecat and CRQ part of the regular Windows and Internet Explorer Operating Systems and Applications. DigitalConvergence’s demise thwarted these efforts, although Pulitzer tried to save the company’s downfall with cash infusion/acquisition negotiations from Microsoft, Intel, Dell and Yahoo. These negotiations failed due to stock market conditions and the advent of the attacks on The Pentagon and New York City on September, 11, 2001. These videos and documents show how far the Cuecat was down the development road with technology, patents and codes being included in pagers, cellphones, hand held devices, Palm’s, Keyboards, Computer Mice and keychain and fob applications. Lack of funding and the bankruptcy of DigitalConvergence halted the release of these devices and caused the layoff of almost 1200 people in DigitalConvergence Offices in Dallas, New York City, Los Angeles, London and Hong Kong. Today, Scanning to connect, buy, register or gain information is a common device application and feature. In the years after CueCat, several different technologies have emerged, emulating the goals; ideas and technologies developed by Pulitzer and Digital Convergence. These technologies, popularized by the introduction of CueCat, provide some of the same features for consumer bar code scanning and web-connected interaction. The QR code, seen regularly today almost a decade after CueCat was introduced and Microsoft Tag, introduced in 2009, have been mentioned as modern reinventions of CueCat.

Patent History

As a result of the creation of CueCat and DigitalConvergence, J. Hutton Pulitzer, has become one of the most granted and referenced patent authors in the United States. For the last two years he his patents have been granted at a rate of one every two weeks. His patent Portfolio spans applications and systems for Internet Communications, Internet Marketing, Internet Commerce,Transactional Media, Interactive Media, Broadcasting, Communications, Manufacturing, Content Distribution, Social Media, Transactional Analysis, Computer Interface and Systems, Customer Identification, Security Identification, Environmental Systems, Mining Systems, Environmental Applications and Research and Data Analysis . With 115 US Patents, over 1476 (and growing daily) Forward Citations and 2850 Patents within the European Union, Pulitzer’s have arguably developed as one of the most important patent portfolios within the Digital Age. Pulitzer’s Core Internet Patents have spawned 1476 Forward Citations. The forward citation count shows the influence of a particular patent on the further development of the industry as a whole. The more the citation counts, the larger the impact is on the industry development. The normal USPTO average for a Patent of worth is a measure of 1.0, meaning 1 patent and 1 forward reference within 5 years (one patent begets a future patent). Pulitzer’s Core Patents have a measure of 49.0, meaning one Pulitzer Patent begets 49 new Industry patents or an astonishing growth impact of 4900%. Pulitzer’s current Forward Citation Matrix shows 49.2 average core citations, 1870 total citations and an estimated 5 year 5684 citations.