Making use of that CueCat

I had several CueCats laying around from the time when RadioShack was giving them out for free. They were bar code readers made by Digital Convergence that were supposed to read URLs embedded in bar codes that were to be found in magazines, books… printed media in general. You could find the bar codes in a handful of publications, but the idea turned out to be a total flop and the company went away, but many people kept the bar code reader. With some slight modification, you can convert a CueCat to a regular bar code reader that doesn’t need the software created by Digital Convergence. All you need to do is destroy some signal traces with a blunt tool. If you have any CueCats still around, you should try it.

A bar code reader could be great if you like to create digital records of DVDs and such.