FREE CRQ - Scan bar codes and it brings you to their web page

[jedithrawn13]

it's from radio shack. It plugs into the back of your computer. They make you give them your e-mail address and they e-mail you an activication code.. so I assume that they are monitoring everything you do and are gonna send you e-mails about what you've scanned, or sell the info. But, it's a great little thing that i've had a lot of fun with.
Free CRQ

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

LET THE FLAMING BEGIN...

 

[MasterOfEvil]

OLD NEWS!!

 

[Deuce300]

have we seen this before?

 

[noxipoo]

not everyone has seen it. go easy boys

 

[CrazyJake]

It's the Cue Cat right? lol...Hey what I thought was cool is when I got my free subscription to Wired, they gave me a cue cat with my first issue. Some kind of contest promotion thing.

 

[mcdull]

Every subscriber of october Wired should have recieved the free CueCat. It also came with an audio cable for connection with TV
The one from Radio Shack doesn't have audio cable.

 

[WiKKed]

It also came with Forbes Magazine. I ended up with 2 of them just coming in the mail. Plus you can just pick one up anytime at Radio Shack. I read an article somewhere saying that now there are privacy issues with it and it provides the company with too much person information etc. I dunno. We'll have to see what happens. Just about every page of Forbes has a little bar code on it, so I guess it could be useful.

 

[Lvis]

link

Those of you that have these things might find this link interesting.

 

[Wagner]

The CueCat has been hacked, reverse engineered and analy penitrated. There are alternative drivers, programs and barcode reference websites up the wazoo. None of these require any personal information whatsoever. You can pick up a CueCat, throw away the yucky software that comes with it, and download better, safer, open source software for it.

 

[GetInMyFatBelly]

What if you don't run Linux?

 

[Wagner]

open source != Linux

Although the majority of CueCat driver development is for Linux, there is a healthy amount of development going on for open source Windows drivers as well. A good place to start looking is Ken Segler's BBS. Ken Segler is the guy from Las Vegas who originally hacked the I-Opener.

These threads are especially of interest:

[L]http://www.kenseglerdesigns.com/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=whatever&Post=1472&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0&Session=[/L]

[L]http://www.kenseglerdesigns.com/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=bnews&Post=204&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0&Session=[/L]

Here is another good place:

[L]http://www.planetsourcecode.com/vb/scripts/BrowseCategoryOrSearchResults.asp?txtCriteria=cuecat&blnWorldDropDownUsed=TRUE&txtMaxNumberOfEntriesPerPage=10&blnResetAllVariables=TRUE&lngWId=1&B1=Go&optSort=Alphabetical[/L]

Here's how to deactivate your CueCat's serial number:

[L]http://matrixpm.com/~haveblue/cuecat/[/L]

And finally, here's a list of links and mirrors to every CueCat related project there is. Remember that Perl programs run on Windows as well as Linux. For Windows, you need to install ActivePerl (which is like a Java Virtual Macine for Perl programs) or you can use perl2exe to turn Perl code into Win32 executables:

[L]http://www.logorrhea.com/cuecat/mirrors.html[/L]

In short, there is absolutely no reason to use the yucky standard sortware, regardless of your OS.