Skip to main content

Amazon Remembers

Amazon RemembersThis week Amazon released a free iPhone app that provides more native access to the Amazon store experience. It has the expected features like product search, product data, reviews and of course, 1-click purchases. In addition, Amazon has introduced a new experimental feature called Amazon Remembers.

Amazon Remembers allows customers to snap photos of objects of interest and upload them to Amazon. Once uploaded, Amazon uses MTurk to identify the product and within minutes the app notifies customers with a link to the matching product. In my tests, an iPhone snap was identified as the iPod Touch (since Amazon doesn't sell iPhones), a Pepsi can returned a link to Coca Cola (since Pepsi is not sold on Amazon or some MTurker has a wicked sense of humor), a Palm Z22 was not identified, and a book was identified perfectly.

Get the app from the iTunes app store.

Comments

Rainman said…
Seems like a pretty useful app. One of my favorite apps that run on Android, Compare Everywhere, pulls up product info by barcode scanning. It retrieves a list of stores in and around the area that have that product and displays pricing info as well. However, the product DB itself seems quite limited, or at least that's what I inferred from my testing.
Falcon said…
Lets say you don't have an iPhone, but you're one of those poor souls with just an iPod touch without a camera. Do you know of any way to to use the service, short of inviting a friend with an iPhone over?
Anonymous said…
@Brat: The iPhone's fixed focus camera makes it useless for reading 1D bar codes. There are some apps that read the 2D bar codes (QR Codes).

@Falcon: AFAIK the iPhone is the only interface to upload images into the Amazon remembers system. When one logs into the regular web interface, Amazon only displays previously uploaded images; I can't find a way to upload images.

Popular posts from this blog

Migrating from Palm Calendar to Google Calendar and iPhone

Here are the free steps to migrate from Palm's date book (or Pimlico's DateBk6 ) calendar to Google calendar for full iPhone sync. First, sync Palm with Palm Desktop . Next, open Palm Desktop, select the Calendar view, navigate to File | Export, select Export Type as Date Book Archive, Range as All and provide a file name. This will export the calendar data as Date Book Archive (.dba). There's a paid tool called DBA2CSV that converts .dba files to .csv files. However this can be done for free using Yahoo Calendar. Login into Yahoo Calendar and via Settings/Import, import the .dba file. It helps to have an empty Yahoo Calendar. Via Settings/Export, export the calendar as .csv file. Login to Google Calendar (also works with Google Apps For Your Domain GAFYD Calendar) and import the .csv file into any of the calendars. It is a good idea to create a test calendar and test the import before importing into your real calendar. That way if anything goes wrong, you can delet...

AD-5526 Digital Multimeter

The AD-5526 is an ancient multimeter from A&D but for $10 one can’t complain. Has all the basic features one would expect from a multimeter and at 5.2 cm X 9.5 cm X 2.6 cm, it’s quite compact. Uses a LRV08 12V alkaline battery – not a common battery in the USA.

RTL-SDR, Raspberry Pi and Plane Spotting via ADS-B

Most modern aircraft carry an ADS-B ( Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast ) transmitter that puts out information about the aircraft's identification, geospatial location, speed, and heading. This information is received by ground stations and air traffic control and used as a replacement for radar-based tracking. ADS-B relies on line-of-sight communication via signals transmitted at 1090 Mhz and has a range of up to 250 nautical miles. Sites such as FlightAware , FlightRadar24 , Plane Finder , RadarBox24 , etc. collect ADS-B information using a vast array of ADS-B receivers, some of which are run by hobbyists, and present this information on maps with near-real-time updates. With the advent of cheap software-defined-radio (SDR) dongles, over the past few years, it has become extremely cheap and easy for amateurs to receive ADS-B signals, upload data to these sites and, in exchange, get access to premium features from these sites. This guide will walk you t...