61–70 of 211 posts
They could add the CueCat to their list. I seem to remember that Wired got all excited about it at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
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.
It's missing "Pryme Vessyl", the "smart cup" that tracked your water intake and told you when to drink water. You know, just in case you lose the sense of thirst for some bizarre reason.
> You know, just in case you lose the sense of thirst for some bizarre reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipsia
The definition of "for some bizarre reason"
Seems prudent to point out this isn't the product of a disgruntled's weekend project with fancy webdesign. This is a product from MSCHF which is a $100M+ startup [1] (feels like they're getting a bit of an astroturfed free ride of prime PR on HN because folks may not realize who is behind this) [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/279769-42
They could add the CueCat to their list. I seem to remember that Wired got all excited about it at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
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.
They could add the CueCat to their list. I seem to remember that Wired got all excited about it at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not too familiar with OLPC (perhaps they were indeed a money grab), but I feel there is a difference between "oops..my startup that would have made me rich AF failed" and "oops.. my startup that would have made the internet more accessible for african kids failed"
Although Negroponte is an angel investor these days according to Wikipedia, so he did become wealthy somehow. I'm not sure how much OLPC helped that (although leaders of seemingly noble non-profits can do quite well for themselves in general).
Is „one laptop per child“ really as bad as the other vaporware/fraudware in the list?
Not necessarily. The list is actually two different categories mixed together: 1. Products which failed because they were targeting their niche poorly (e.g. Juicero, OLPC) 2. Products which failed because they were outright scams (e.g. Theranos, Coolest) However, I do think the failure of OLPC is still interesting enough to deserve a mention on this list. With OLPC in particular they were trying to be like three diff…
It was just a stupid idea and they underestimated the difficulty of getting them made. It cost far more than they thought and they tried to dig themselves out of that hole by selling them on Amazon and trying to use the profit to pay for the copies they owed to their Kickstarter backers. This caused all sorts of drama, but my impression that they did their best to try to deliver what they had promised.
Theranos was very different in that they were clearly lying about their capabilities, and hid the truth at all costs, up to causing serious problems for people that needed a real analysis and got a fake one.