Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
Remember that free barcode scanner that was sent out to millions of Americans? I can't remember the name and Google doesn't help (I think it had "quick" in the name). That one lost support when the manufacturer went bankrupt and someone wrote Linux drivers.
CueCat (styled as ':CueCat'). I have one, from what was practically the only time I ever visited a Radio Shack store (go get the freebie handout). ;-> https://www.linux.com/news/review-cuecat-barcode-scanner/ https://cuecat.com/ http://www.beau.lib.la.us/~jmorris/linux/cuecat/ The CueCat was a bar-code scanner shaped like a cat. (Let that one sink in). The cat plugged into a consumer's computer with an actual wire—no Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi. The consumer then scanned print ads with it. So your typical Dawn of the Century Man was meant to sit there with a magazine or newspaper, then see an ad and be so moved by that ad that he'd reach for this bar-code scanner attached to his computer, scan the ad and then be whisked away to … a website. That is all CueCat did: take the consumer from an ad to, basically, another ad. (And this was after the consumer installed the software on his or her computer and registered with his or her ZIP code, gender, and email address.) Belo Corp., RadioShack, Y&R and Coca-Cola were among the companies that invested a total of [US] $185 million into this. https://adage.com/article/ken-wheaton/tempted-latest-marke/298660