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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

That was a neat one.

I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried.

One of those 'oh man great idea ... oh no I don't think it will ever work' kinda situations.

It was very much a fun early mass consumer days of the internet kinda shot in the dark / fun to me.

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> I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried.

I think they gave away the readers for free. I had one at one point, and I certainly wouldn't have paid a penny for it. I think they were also the basis for quite a few barcode-based hobbyist projects at the time.

Yes. I still have mine and I didn't pay for it. I don't remember how/where I got it but it was free to me.

In retrospect I see it as ahead of it's time. The idea of "place a computer readable label on things to send you to a special website (etc)" is still alive and used today in the form of QR codes. The hardware problem ended up solved by convincing everyone to carry a computer in their pocket and image recognition, but the central idea is pretty much unchanged.

That's a good observation. The custom hardware solution as the smartphone has enabled so much.

The Dallas Morning News sent them to subscribers with their Sunday paper back when this was a thing, because they realized nobody would buy one. It still failed miserably.

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