From: Tom Whore (tomwhore@inetarena.com)
Date: Tue Oct 03 2000 - 15:44:29 PDT
On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Lisa Dusseault wrote:
--]name for it. Computers now fit into that too with "internet service
--]contracts" built into the price of the computer.
These are devices to better market either another productor a service.
They are metaproducts.
The cuecat is nto a public good any more than a car is or a oxygen tank
is.. to certian people with certian needs. Wheel chairs are public greats
if you need one, but they still cost.
The cuecat was a bad marketing plan that is now trying to turn its frown
upside down.
--]The VCR+ stuff is similar to cuecat, and their people did much better at
--]protecting their market but I'm not sure how. Their algorithm, at least, is
--]secret and hasn't been fully cracked.
Good point. With tivo and the like sweepign round there might be some
expansion on this.
--]One observation is that it costs more to manufacture the cuecat than people
--]have been willing to pay for it, so without an artificially cheap source it
--]wouldn't even have become a market. But, if the codes (content) become
--]widely-enough distributed, then the devices (readers) might be worth what
--]they actually cost.
What is the cost savings of typign in an url? Thats one of the things this
is about.
If this were indeeed a "public good" why not just print eh string the bar
code is made from and let users TYPE it into a form on a web site (or in
the case of cue cat a proprietary front end) Im sure they could come oup
with a way to gicve urls obscure propritary codes that you would have to
go thru thier DBS to use typed or scanned.
(cddb anyone?)
The cue cat is more and more a gizzmo that was thought to be a way to trap
the consumer into a front end of profit for DC. So sad they gave the farm
away and relied on base64 encoding for thier "secret years of resaerch"
secret sauce.
--]of media readers, like WebTV. Anyway, the free-rider effect hurts them here
--]too, because another competitor that doesn't have to make up the cost of the
--]100,000 free devices can sell for less. The only thing that would protect
--]the company would be significant patents in the manufacturing or positioning
--]of the device.
I hope they stay in biz long enough for enough of these to be
retooled and reeducated for more fun usage. cueCate Quake COntroler, CuCat
reorder system (ala uscan), cuCat ID systems (yea wired, like that wont be
hacked cracked and legistaled in 5 seconds) and most of all the CueCat
aroudn the world where in everyone holds up thier glowing red cat while a
satalite snaps a pick of the earth with a red band across it.
We are the world..we are the cue cat
(sway with me detriot)
[---=== WSMF ----http://wsmf.doesntexist.com===---]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 03 2000 - 15:47:34 PDT