Google to Launch Another Cuecat

I was at Google's NYC HQ last night for an interesting Meetup with The Advertising Club of New York. Google's speakers included Tim Castelli, New York Sales Director; Long Ellis, Head of Sales, Television; Joseph Anastasi, Team Manager, Audio East; Sarah Carberry, Team Manager, Consumer Packaged Goods; Patrick Grandinetti, Senior Agency Lead, East Region; and Tiffany Shen Miller, Account Executive, Print Ads.

Anyway, the talked-about news of the night happened when Tiffany alluded to Google placing 'bar codes' of a sort in print ads in hopes that people would take a picture of them with their software enabled cell phones and be redirected to a website. The idea is that these bar codes would make it easier for consumers to get more information and easier for marketers to track the effectiveness of their print ads.

All I could think about was the CueCat. I had one of these things plugged into my computer for ages. I had the PS/2 version, not even USB. Anyway, at first I thought it was pretty cool that I could scan barcodes in my latest issue of Wired, but it quickly wore off. Google's taking a little bit of a different approach, using cell phones, but man, they have a long, long way to go with this one.

Good luck Tiffany.