As a device to bring print media readers to corporate Web sites
via bar-code scanning, the CueCat has barely scratched its way out
of the litter box. But there may be a useful life for CueCat after
all. RTMark, an organization that offers bounties for "acts of
creative subversion against mass-produced items," is now offering
free software that turns CueCat against its corporate masters. With
the software, called CueJack, in place, a scan of a bar-coded Web
address will actually point the user to Web sites that contain
critical information about the company in question. CueJack was
developed by a hacker who goes by the nom de guerre of Cue P. Doll.
"It's not that I have some vendetta against CueCat," Doll told The
Net Economy in an e-mail interview. "It's more the cultural
assumptions surrounding CueCat that disturb and amuse me. CueCat
takes passive consumerism and turns it to active consumerism —
people are supposed to happily go out and wrangle up their own ads!
So I decided to make it active in a different
way." |