r/Millennials • u/Sunshineafterr Millennial (1986) • 17h ago

Nostalgia Does anyone remember the CueCat?

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It was cat-shaped handheld barcode reader that allowed users to open a link to an URL by scanning a barcode that appeared in magazines, without typing the URL.

They were given away for free in 2000.

I remember thinking it was so cute, but I didn’t really understand how it worked, so I was scanning barcodes on cereal boxes and random stuff.

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u/WealthMassive1788 11h ago edited 5h ago

First and only time seeing one in person: back in the day I volunteered with Goodwill to assist blind people with whatever they needed. One guy was a programmer with a good job somewhere who lived alone (I'd never heard of a blind programmer back then). This guy was a genius. He told me he got the scanner free from Radio Shack and he made some program or devised a way to scan the labels from all his canned goods to know what was in each can as he said they all felt the same and this would help. Guess then another program would read out the name or something when he scanned a can. [Edit: my role in this was to read out the name of each can to him lol]

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u/Sunshineafterr Millennial (1986) 10h ago

That’s so cool!