The CueCat Doesn't Seem So Dumb Now

Was connecting the physical world to the Net a dumb idea, or the CueCat device?

When barcodes can be scanned using a camera phone (Physical World Connection), billions of URLS get added to the Internet database, hundreds of billions of physical objects become become "physical websites".

Pay per click morphs into "pay per scan" and brands are able to interact with a consumer anywhere and anytime via mobile phone.

Kelson has an interesting story about barcodes, the CueCat and Physical World Connection called Linking The Real And Virtual.

Was the CueCat ahead of its time?

CueCat was a single-purpose device that scanned barcodes and was tied to the desktop.

There has been plenty of discussion of the CueCat being a dumb idea. The device might be considered dumb, but the idea of linking any physical object to the Internet could be a multi-billion dollar opportunity....not so dumb.

Big Media Invests In Physical World Connection

Was big media the first to adopt physical world connection?

I find it interesting that a major media holding company invested in probably the first physical world connection company.. They had the right idea, but the wrong device.

Do the major media companies see the billions of "CueCats" already on the market?

In a story that focuses on how the news is slanted by powerful interests, we see how Belo Corporation and their WFAA TV station tried to introduce PWC.

High-tech gizmos often have a special place on local TV news. Even more so when the TV station's parent company is behind the new invention.

The Belo Corporation invested $40 million in a company called Digital Convergence that manufactures a bar code-scanning device called CueCat. Those using CueCat on their personal computers can scan the bar codes on advertisements, calling up more information about that product.

According the Dallas Observer (9/21/00,) Dallas station WFAA-Channel 8 ran segments about CueCat three nights in a row in September on their news broadcast. WFAA is owned by Belo.

People can mock and criticize the CueCat, but the concept was way ahead of it's time and people couldn't imagine connecting the physical world to the Internet yet. Now some "visionaries" are calling it a killer app.

CueCat Has Nine Lives

The CueCat was a great concept, but didn't have the right tool for execution, until now. A camera phone and a physical world hyperlink (barcode, logo, RFID tag) can offer Internet access.

From Wired.com The CueCat is back

The ill-fated CueCat bar-code reader has been reincarnated as a cell-phone application that recognizes corporate logos.

Distributed to millions of magazine subscribers, the scanner redirected readers to advertisers' web pages after they scanned a bar code printed in the magazine.

Mobile marketing campaigns are starting to offer physical world hyperlinks as a great way to interact with the consumer.

"We hyperlink the visual world," said Harmut Neven, NevenVision's CEO. "Users should come to expect that every billboard is not just a billboard -- it's a big shining link to mobile content."

Notice how we are seeing more press coverage about the physical world being connected to the electronic one. It's only a matter of time till brands realize how big a role this will play in mobile marketing.

If At First You Don't Succeed

Every time I see a story that criticizes the CueCat, I imagine Robert Adler chuckles a little, all the way to the bank.

Here's another story calling this the worst invention ever. I disagree.

The worst idea since the CueCat

NO, it was the wrong device for this application. I don't think anyone doubts how big and how many applications will come from connecting the physical world to the digital one will be.

I bet Robert Adler wouldn't call the Lazy Bones the worst idea. It is what gave him the idea that is in just about every home in the World.

Imagine having a cable run from your TV directly through your living room, how ugly is that.

So next time somebody knocks the CueCat, just remember we are one step closer to connecting the physical world. Be thankful Robert Adler didn't listen to to Lazy Bones critics.

But This Time It's Different

The Mobile Insider discusses how camera phones that can read 2d codes, and eventually 1d barcodes, will be different than the failed CueCat.

From Mobile Insider The revenge of the Cue Cat

The CueCat was a handheld personal scanning device that was supposed to "inter-activate" print. By reading codes in ads, editorials and flyers, it would pop up corresponding Web pages online. This was supposed to spare us the inconvenience of typing in lengthy URLs and bridge the world of physical and virtual worlds for publishers and marketers.

One U.K. firm, World Forum Research, is stoking the old embers in a new report. With the success of using mobile phones as code readers in Japan and Korea, the company predicts that 70% of U.S. and European consumers will use 2D codes to activate content on their phones by 2009.

These mobile "hyperlinks" will use a visual code, an audio cue or even some sort of touch or proximity signal to pull down to the phone some piece of content or WAP link.

At some point this is going to happen, I have no doubt. But 70% of us using it by 2009?

Handset manuf, wireless providers and packaging companies are already putting the necessary infrastructure in place.

As WFR points out, there are successful trials of the necessary enabling technologies in the U.S., and some systems are already in place in the Asian markets.

The potential here is so monstrous that companies and solutions are just pouring in. That alone is why 2009 seems like an awfully premature target date.

Huh? That statement doesn't make any sense.

I fear the competition and shakeout phase on this one could be huge.

I agree. With all of the players on this list a shakeout is inevitable when Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc implement a code scanning application for the masses. .

Mytago Is CueCat With A Camera Phone And 2D Codes

We can't put Mytago on the physical world connection list yet. They offer the ability to scan a 2d code with a camera phone, but they dont follow through on the direct connection part.

I will give them an "A" for effort though. They are showing how easy physical world hyperlinks can be created and they are allowing consumers to decide what they want to connect in the physical world.

They really just offer 2d code bookmarks.

I expect more of these "create and scan your own code" services to be popping up, but they will need to offer a direct connection function. Mytago is just CueCat with a camera phone.

Nokia phones come with 2d code readers preinstalled, and then you see how a mobile marketing powerhouse gets built.

Mytago tags are a new version of the common barcodes. Instead of the barcode scanner, you scan tags by taking a snapshot with your phone camera and later get the details of the tag on your PC.

You scan it by taking a snapshot with your mobile phone camera as a bookmark for the event. Later at home, you transfer the tag to your laptop and upload it to mytago.com and get all the details about the event.

That seems like a lot of work doesn't it?

The flowchart of how it works is just confusing

Nice find teach42.com

Mobile Barcodes And Patent Trolls

Phone Scoop has an interesting post about patent trolls, mobile barcodes and Physical World Connection.

"a company called neomedia would constantly give me a hard time whenever i wrote about mobile barcodes (especially in Asia) because they claimed to own all the patents on this idea and swore that they did it first.


Neomedia is still around, and still making these same claims. But neomedia never made anything, they bought the intellectual property from cuecat (remember them?) and then put up a web page with examples of how their technology would work. Supposedly Neomedia finally has a working barcode reader now, but of course so does every phone manufacturer outside the US."

It's interesting to hear views and opinions on companies associated with the Physical World Connection.
This view seems to be more the standard than the exception.

Microsoft Unveils AURA.... A Bar Code Scanning Application For Mobile

When the words bar code, mobile and Microsoft are used in the same sentence, you know a big opportunity is coming.

It's time to officially add Microsoft to the Physical World Connection list with this announcement.

While Google is focusing on creating content, what about the content that already exists?
Microsoft is offering the ability to create AND link to new and existing "content", the physical world.

Google is concentrating on the PC world, Mister Softee recognizes the big opportunity lies with the mobile because there will be more mobile phones with Internet access than PCs.

Because Microsoft's AURA provides the ability to connect the billions of physical world hyperlinks that ALREADY exist (instead of creating new 2D codes, QR codes), this application could tip the playing field for the mobile marketing space.

The camera and RFID scanner on your mobile phone are your "mouse" and every physical object has, or will have, a physical world hyperlink, Phase 2 of the Internet begins.

In October, Microsoft disrupted the Physical World Connection space when they unveiled their beta 2D Code application called Windows Live Barcode that allows users to create their own 2D code and connect various physical objects to the Internet. Just install decoder software on handsets and capture QR Code via a built-in camera

Today Microsoft yakes another big step to dominate the Physical World Connection space and is allowing people with Windows Mobile operating system to download Advanced User Resource Annotation (AURA).

The big news here is that Microsoft is offering the ability to connect with both a 1D (bar code) and 2D code (physical world hyperlinks). 1D codes are already on billions of products, 2D codes are rapidly becoming the standard for many industries.

Physical world hyperlinks are being called The Next Big Internet Trend

People with an AURA-enabled device would use its digital camera to snap the bar code on a product.

AURA then would deliver several links and search results about the item to the handheld computer. A consumer might learn whether the same product is available for a lower price elsewhere, for example, or whether the item was manufactured in a country with controversial labor practices.

Microsoft is now providing the "dial tone" and Internet access for billions of products. The mobile marketing applications are endless.

Download the AURA Mobile Client

Marc Smith, a researcher in Microsoft's community technologies group, acknowledges that "history is littered with efforts in this regard. This is not really a brand new idea at all."

He cites, for example, failed devices such as the CueCat, which could read bar codes in newspapers and magazines and send their users' PCs directly to affiliated Web pages.

Complimenting the ability to scan/connect the physical world hyperlinks 1D code and 2D codes, Microsoft is developing an RFID browser and an application to connect images Photo2Search . Photo2Search gives users a way to search a Web-based database by using nothing more than an image captured by a cellphone equipped with a digital camera.

There are many other physical world hyperlinks that will allow a mobile device to scan and connec to the Internet. One that is used everyday is the fingerprint.

While Google has made some progress in the physical world connection space, Microsoft continues to offer applications for the next Phase of the Internet, a much bigger one.

If I was Google, want to know what I would do?

The Blind Are Using Physical World Connection

Scanning a barcode will offer other informative applications besides price comparison. I view this as a wirelessCueCat.

The CueCat might not seem like a bad idea any more.

Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing affordable scanning systems to give blind people greater independence in daily activities, such as cooking, grocery shopping or riding a bus.

Their system relies on devices available in any electronics store, including a cell phone, Bluetooth wireless headset and portable bar code scanner.

Here's how the Trinetra prototype works:

The blind person uses a bar code-reading pencil to scan a grocery item. The information is sent via the wireless headset to an Internet-enabled cell phone.

The phone communicates with a public database, which translates the bar code into a recognizable product name.

This name is relayed to the cell phone, where text-to-speech software articulates it into the headset.

Using this technology, Rossi can shop for groceries without the help of a friend or store clerk. He also can distinguish between products in his own refrigerator and kitchen cabinet

One Man's Flop Is Another Man's Killer App

Sometimes a killer application is introduced too early with the wrong packaging for people to get "it".

BusinessWeek's cover story called Eureka, we failed has some insights on how businesses are handling their approach to innovation.

I find it interesting they highlight one of the first attempts to physical world connection as a flop.

For good measure, we'll throw in our own industry's spectacularly useless flop: the CueCat. A marketer's dream, the device, which was launched in 2000 (when else?), scanned bar codes from magazine and newspaper ads, directing readers to Web sites so they wouldn't have to go to the trouble to type in the URL.

While the device may have been a bad idea, the concept of connecting the physical world to electronic one is now being pursued by the biggest Internet players. The clunky piece of plastic shaped like a cat, has been replaced by over 2 billion devices that people carry with them every day.

Hardly a flop in my opinion.

Physical World Connection Called The Next Killer App

MyClick, and their QR code scanning via camera phone, being called the next killer application .


iMagic Systems has launched a free new service that enables consumers' camera-phone snapshots to help initiate mobile e-commerce.

It might not be MyClick, but the concept of linking the physical world to the Internet using a physical world hyperlink, in my opinion, will produce The Next Google

A couple interesting points to note w/ iMagic's MyClick physical world connection application.

First, they modify a QR code to make it unique for their resolving function. They are also getting the advertisers pick up the tab for consumers to adopt this application.

From Televisionpoint MyClick software for advertisers

A number of leading advertisers will subsidise costs for consumers interacting with them via mobile phone, as part of a major push to develop the mobile as a marketing medium.

The software will enable owners of GPRS and 3G phones to browse advertiser WAP sites through their phones without having to pay any charges to the mobile phone operators. These fees will be paid instead by the advertiser, based on the number of times people use the software to access the site.

Advertisers will pay for consumers to use their wireless data plan?
MyClick works on similar lines to QR codes currently deployed in Japan, China and Taiwan, where users use their camera phones to take a picture of a special symbol, giving them online access to a special WAP site.

Rather than a symbol, however, MyClick software recognises a special frame studded with stars that advertisers can use as a border for an image.

Does adding these stars make this 2d code proprietary?

"It is up to advertisers to come up with new, innovative ideas to stimulate people to take action, If we work together, we can then create a wave of adoption and understanding." said an official who relates in this matter.

iMagic is a leading technology company in Hong Kong that has over 10 years history of excellence and international acclaim for its product development and integration and as an operator of public access payment and telecommunications solutions.

The irony here is that the concept of linking the physical world to the Internet is being called the next killer app, and yet PC World just listed the CueCat (the same principle) as being one of the 25 Worst Tech Products of all time.

Next Generation Advertising

David Schatsky from Jupiter Research moderated a panel for 212: New York's Interactive Advertising Club

Ashley Heather from NextCode gave some interesting insights.

Ashley explained how NextCode will not be another CueCat.

At the presentation I (David) noted some timely support for NextCode's plan make print interactive from Kevin O'Malley, publisher of Esquire, quoted in the New York Times recently as saying,

If you are not finding ways to extend your brand so that it's more than just a magazine with printed pages, if you're not finding a way for advertisers to connect with consumers through multiple touch-points with event marketing, you will not be here in 10 or 15 years.

Ashley gets the concept of physical world connection.

Full Story

Apple And The Barcode Make A Physical World Connection

Very interesting. This opens up the possibilities for every barcode.

Delicious Monster and Apple are offering a product that allows you to scan a barcode on a DVD, book, movie , video game and music and transfer the data to your Delicious Library.

Remember the CueCat barcode scanner? Well Delicious Library works with that device too.

What I envision is to be able to scan all my books, movies, music and store them on some sort of Apple device soon. I can carry my entire entertainment library with me.

Delicious Library reads every single frame of digital video; seeking out, targeting, and instantly decoding any visible barcodes. This results in a seamless process of scanning that lets you import about 750 items an hour.

At that rate the staff of the new downtown Seattle Central Library could work together to import all of their 1.4 million books into Delicious Library in just over 5 hours


Quickly importing your stuff into Delicious Library doesn't require a dedicated barcode scanner - you can use any Quick Time supported digital video camera, like your Apple iSight. Just hold the barcode on the back of any book, movie, CD, or video game in front of the camera and your item magically shows up on your digital shelf seconds later.

Delicious Library is simply the best way to keep track of what you have and don't have. When you start building a collection of DVDs, your friends have got to be eyeing them, and it's time you open your own movie store. Using your Address Book and iCal calendar, you can check stuff out to them without wondering if you'll ever see it again.

This sounds like a file sharing application more than a downloading service. The company has plans to introduce an iTunes option with this.

Lots of opportunities here.

Great find kokonut.

Integrating The Internet With The Physical World

This came up through one of my alerts. I don't know who Little Spring Designs Design is or if they are being paid to promote, but I found the article very "familiar".

Integrating the Internet with the Physcial World.

Up until recently, the Internet, with all its information capabilities, was something you used while sitting at a desk. Do you want more information about a particular product? Check the internet. Would you like to compare prices? Check the internet. Would you like to know whether the product on the shelf you are looking at in the store is a good value? Wait until you get home.

Companies have long recognized the potential benefits of allowing the virtual world to interact with us in the physical world, but nobody has yet changed our lives in that way. Several companies are close, waiting on location-based services, but we believe that NeoMedia's PaperClick is likely to be the leading service for pull-based integration.

Pull based integration will turn into push marketing for brands.

Companies from the dot-com boom such as E-Compare were attempting to do price comparisons by requiring the user to type information using limited keypads. The services failed for serveral reasons, including slow network speeds, user typing, and the databases only including internet prices. The companies failed for all the above reasons plus not having good business models.

Along similar lines, there have been products that allow users to collect snippets of information from the physical world for later use. Examples include bar code readers such as NeoMedia 's Cross pen and even voice recorders.

Yes, the CueCat.

These solutions require a lot of time investment from the user, who has to be interested both at the point of information physical presence and later when the user sits down at a computer. This will only happen if the user has an intense interest.

Waiting on Location-Based Services

There is another set of products that will work beautifully once location-based services (LBS) are prevalent and cheap. Mobile yellow pages from companies such as Go2online and InfoSpace have good products. Perhaps the most important feature of these products is that they can extract revenues not from the users, but from the companies who would like "premier listings". However, these products won't really come into their own until location services allows the user to find the nearest restaurant or ATM to where they are, rather than some location they can actually type in. This will also allow accurate directions to get to the point of interest.

While Go2online is purely a "pull" technology, the advertising industry is clamoring to push messages to users based on time of day, situation, or location. At lunchtime, local restaurants could send coupons or other messages to increase traffic whenever necessary. The chief problem with these services, aside from lack of LBS, is getting people to opt in, especially in a country where the recipient and not the sender pays for messages. This problem can be overcome by giving users something of value in exchange for their participation, such as ringers, images, or coupons. Users' selection of what they value can help in market segmentation activities.

Seth Godin refers to this in his book Permission Marketing .

Permission is key for mobile marketing, This isn't spam or a pop-up, its much more intrusive. Those four square inches will be considered tho most valuable advertising real estate.

I talk about how advertisers must create campaigns that allow consumers to interact with the brand here.

Google purchased Keyhole , software and a database that allows users from their PC to view visual images of anything and everything outside, down to fire hydrants. They also recently introduce maps.google.com that gives users browser access to the data using Javascript. It may be only a short time until we can take pictures using our camera phones and have the phone tell us exactly where we are. This could be a method of getting location-based services without carrier participation, but the search requirements would be enormous without at least some help from the carrier or device. In the meantime, it's a cool desktop application.

Google buys Keyhole for their enormous database. Think of any vast database. That is what a search engine needs in order to provide a comprehensive search. Words, pictures, audio, video are all examples..Obviously the video contains the most data.

PaperClick – more than just bar codes

NeoMedia 's PaperClick service marries internet data with real-world objects. Wherever a bar code exists, users can launch an application on their camera-phone, take a picture, and be transferred to the appropriate web site. Taking a picture of a book's ISBN will direct the user to, for example, the Amazon.com web page for that book. A real estate sign bar code could take the user to a virtual tour of the home. A picture of a consumer electronics bar code could take the user to a page with demos, features, and user guides.

I call them Physical World Hyperlinks.

By the way, don't try to make your own bar code picture technology, unless you use the NeoMedia switch. They've got a set of patents, including a few protecting the use of bar codes or other machine-readable codes to look up electronic information.

A key court case could be settled in the next few weeks that may determine how encompassing these patents are.

The beauty of NeoMedia's business model is that they are monetizing the switch, not the end user applications. Companies can bid for specific bar codes or blocks of bar codes. For example, Amazon.com could pay for all ISBNs one year, but Barnes & Noble might win the bidding war in the following year. A real estate agent could pay for the bar codes for her properties. Sony could pay for bar codes for its products.

As more people use the PaperClick service the bar codes become more valuable, and NeoMedia has finally hit upon a combination of factors to make end user adoption easy. First, users can download the J2ME application to access PaperClick services for free. Second, the only necessary hardware is a camera phone with J2ME MIDP2.

The bar code technology can also be used to create interactive advertising campaigns, something NeoMedia is actively and successfully pursuing. Any sort of magazine or poster campaign can add a bar code, allowing PaperClick users can visit the site for information, ring tones, coupons, sweepstakes entry, or anything else deliverable via the Internet.

This is how mobile advertising starts. No need to pay for keywords when your user has given you permission to market to him on his cellphone.

The brand can reach the consumer anytime, anywhere...POWERFUL.

There are other ways to make money with PaperClick. Do you manage a tourist area? If you place a few signs with a PaperClick bar code, users can learn about when this building was built and burned down, what related information is nearby, how to get related souveneirs, how to get anywhere else in the tourist area, and where the nearest bathroom is, all for relatively low costs. The user can keep all this information, especially directions, long after walking away from the sign or kiosk. You can also track users' interests by their behavior. You can integrate with a service such as Go2online to integrate your tourist area with the larger region, providing users with a nearly seamless integration.

At CTIA Wireless & IT 2004, NeoMedia also announced keywords for sale (their WordRegistry service). While this sounds like yet another Internet land grab, we need to look at it in the light of the PaperClick service. Within the same PaperClick application that allows users to take pictures of bar codes, users can type a word or phrase. The idea is that the PaperClick switch would then take the user to the "correct" web site. Typing "Treo 650" could take the user to the PalmOne Treo web site, rather than a community site or a sales site. This will work once PaperClick approaches ubiquity. In the meantime, it's another land grab.

Ubiquity is key. If I was Google I would start incorporating this ability into my search. The point when more Internet traffic is done via mobile device than the PC, then what do search engines do then?

Conclusion
The dream of a virtual-enhanced physical world is one of the guiding visions of the mobile internet. Companies have been waiting a few years to get good location-based services from the carriers, and some have failed during the wait. NeoMedia has taken an alternate path to interacting with the physical world, one based on their deep experience with bar codes. This one may work, and soon.

Yes, I refer to this as The Next Google?..No Much Bigger...

The Code That Ate Tokyo

From Wired Mag.
The Code That Ate Tokyo
The barcode is so dead. In Japan, where they dish out the future like candy, everything from magazine ads to vending machines bears next-generation identifiers called Quick Response codes. They look like extreme close-ups of television static, but QRs encode data in two directions - up-and-down in addition to the old Universal Product Code's across. So QRs can hold 100 times as much info: URLs, text, and even low-resolution images.
Yes, other so-called two-dimensional barcode standards exist. But Quick Response hit the big time in 2003 when cell providers DoCoMo, AU, and Vodafone began selling handsets with QR readers.
Now it succeeds where codereaders likeCueCat failed. You can buy soda pop or scan the QR in a magazine ad with your cell and get taken to a related Web site on your phone's browser. And schoolgirls are going nuts for a series of fortune-telling books full of codes that turn your mobile into a Magic 8 Ball.

Will the codes catch on elsewhere? It's hard to tell. QR is best for ideographic languages like Japanese; other 2-D standards, like the Maxi Code, are showing up in the States. We'll probably know soon - most cool Japanese toys make it to the US eventually