Amazon Dash Wand

@ConAndLibrarian Noooo! That means it will be a year before mine shows up.

@heartny I missed that post. Bummer. But thanks for trying. Let us know how it works, OK? I think the coolest thing is that you can stick it on the fridge.

@sammydog01 Sticking it on the fridge is probably all I’ll end up doing with it. Lol

@heartny Better on a fridge than in a drawer with all my Dash buttons.

@sammydog01 I ordered mine on 16Jun and it still says they can’t give me an estimated time for shipping.

@sammydog01 My Dash wand shipped the day after I commented here… maybe you’ll get you’r soon, if you went ahead and ordered it.

@thismyusername I’m so glad you posted this. When I first saw the deal, this cat came to mind, but I was at work and promptly forgot to look it up.

I remember it seemed so state of the art at the time.

@RiotDemon @thismyusername I remember the CueCat very well. I was working for the company that distributed them and had 30 million invested in that technology. We gave them away for free and still nobody wanted them. I think it was ahead of its time because many people at the time didn’t even have computers.

Then the controversy of each one having a unique serial number and privacy concerns. That was the clincher for its demise.

@cengland0 I don’t remember where we got it, but I know it was free. I remember helping to set it up, then we scanned a few things, and it was never used again. When I was reading the wiki, it mentioned that newspapers had cue codes next to stuff… I didn’t even know about that.

I just thought it was cool because it was an electronic cat.

@thismyusername lol. I have one of those also. Well, maybe not also… not clear if you have one or not. In fact, I might have two of them.

Never actually used them tho.

@thismyusername I had one too. Funny people got upset about unique serial numbers but no ones gives a shit about google tracking your sites to sell you ads or Verizon collecting the stuff you search for on the phone on their side to sell. Ok rant over. I got the wand, seems to be the same as the dot minus music although as it what it can do and it says plays music.

@StrangerDanger
The cuecat was at the beginning of public awareness about unannounced tracking, and it generated a lot of outrage. No one was that dependent on insta-digital-everything then.

Now we’ve just mostly given up. We know we’re being tracked every which way. We know the only other option is to not have a cell phone, and go all luddite, and we’d get tracked anyway.

/giphy surrender

@drewesque Good to know. Asking about the weather and traffic is about all I do with my Amazon Tap, so now I can do that with a refrigerator magnet.

@aerosquid turned it into? It was a barcode scanner from the get go.

@RiotDemon
I thought it was a bar code scanner and corporate data thief from the get-go.

Which was, I think, why it crashed and failed?

There was zero disclosure on the data collection or something.

@f00l I have one because cat, but never knew about data collection. I never used it beyond setup. Hmmm.

@f00l I hacked it to remove the serial # and the data collecting BS, Been a long time but it was something like this- http://www.cexx.org/cuecat.htm#neuter

@aerosquid
Our local newspaper was handing them out by the bucketfull. Shortly, the tracking info hit public awareness, and people just threw them away.

@MrMark They will buy it for essentially free. I was surprised to see how mixed the reviews are on the Dash wand so far, and on what grounds. Some are because of issues with the device - poor experience with scan confirmations, for example, or a desire to add items to a shopping list rather than the cart. Some are faults with Amazon’s model, like adding items to your cart with no sanity check on pricing (made worse by third party vendors in Amazon’s ecosystem). It seems like this and other Alexa devices have the potential to drive some people away from Amazon.

@djslack
For free I’ll try one. Hoping that they develop the skills and usefulness out a bit. Otherwise, I’ll wind up trying to decide who to give it to later, if I even keep it.

@MrMark
Amazon people seem to be willing to try stuff out, on the theory that whatever can always be returned hassle-free. And Amazon “fan-persons” seem pretty happy not to worship Amazon or their tech. A critical attitude and a love-hate thing seems to be the norm, to me.

@heartny
Thx. Good info.

@heartny Amazon Prime Day is 11 July, and their guide says that Alexa will have some exclusive deals. The Dash uses Alexa.

@OldCatLady Thanks for the heads-up. I hope Prime Days isn’t a bust this year, as in the past.

@heartny The potential is there, but last year we didn’t have all the devices to help.

@OldCatLady Your phone can do Alexa too. Unless it’s a flip phone.
/giphy flip phone

@sammydog01 This is true. So does Dot. So does Echo. So do the Fires.

@sammydog01 Really? Their timing is not going to help you on Prime Day.

@cinoclav How do you like it so far? It’s a nice box, isn’t it