The CueCat Is Back By Elizabeth Biddlecombe Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69668,00.html
02:00 AM Nov. 28, 2005 PT
The adage that cats have nine lives applies to electronic cats, too. The ill-fated CueCat bar-code reader has been reincarnated as a cell-phone application that recognizes corporate logos.
In 2000, the CueCat scanner became a symbol of tech-industry cluelessness. Distributed to millions of magazine subscribers, the scanner redirected readers to advertisers' web pages after they scanned a bar code printed in the magazine.
But few people used it, and the CueCat became the target of almost universal derision.
Now it's back -- in German mobile phones.
The German branch of Coca-Cola is promoting its CokeFridge portal by encouraging readers of teen magazines Yam!, Starflash and Mäedchen, to take pictures of a special logo with their camera phones.
After e-mailing the picture to the Coke portal, a mobile game and the CokeFridge java application is dispatched to the sender's phone.
The CokeFridge promotion offers chances to win tickets to the FIFA World Cup, as well as download music, ringtones and games.
The technology behind the campaign was developed by California-based Neven Vision.
"We hyperlink the visual world," said Harmut Neven, the company's CEO. "Users should come to expect that every billboard is not just a billboard -- it's a big shining link to mobile content."
Neven Vision's object-recognition technology was developed by Neven as part of his academic work developing sight for robots.
It has a variety of uses, from translating restaurant menus into foreign languages, to helping the Los Angeles Police Department spot gang members.
"You can't reach teenagers just with a TV spot," said Julia Haselmayr, brand PR manager at Coca-Cola in Germany. "We stress mobile marketing very much here in Germany. The mobile phone is very important for teenagers, our target group."
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