Amazon does a Google! APIs for everyone!

July 16, 2002 11:59 PM

Amazon does a Google! APIs for everyone! Cool. Now you can access Amazon's wealth of information via SOAP. This is great news for affiliates who could, potentially, create their own seamless Amazon.com. Amazon even gives some ideas for what cool stuff you could do with the info, including linking keywords from weblogs to their products.
posted by wackybrit (16 comments total)

Good examples here as well. (apologies for the partial self-link, since one of the examples is mine.)

To fix my karma, I'll also point to Erik Benson's excellent Book Watch app that combines the Google API, Amazon's Web Services and OnFocus' BookWatch.

It really seems like there's a limitless set of possiblities with open APIs like this.
posted by kokogiak at 12:12 AM on July 17, 2002

Wow. People are doing stuff with it already? I thought I was actually ahead of the curve for once with this one *g* I wanna find out if you can suck out user product reviews with this, I get the feeling it won't be possible..
posted by wackybrit at 1:31 AM on July 17, 2002

wackybrit: from what I can see quite a few of the product reviews (especially the music ones) are actually sucked into the amazon pages using technology very similar to this. Hopefully you'll be allowed to 'suck on'.

This is astoundingly cool. I don't have the ninja skillz to do anything with it at the moment but I can see that it's astoundingly cool.
posted by nedrichards at 3:52 AM on July 17, 2002

Very, very cool. I really like your Google-esque interface, kokogiak. Another one I found interesting was the similarities map; a little bare-bones looking right now, obviously, but a very cool idea.
posted by scribblative at 4:48 AM on July 17, 2002

For my part, I deliberately refrain from ever clicking on a link that goes to Amazon, from anywhere. Possibly because I'm such a cranky old contrarian bastard. My geek cilia do unfurl and wave in the current at things like this, but my Bad Consumer™ spoilsport retro-rockets make me uninclined to play with them.

But that's just me.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:07 AM on July 17, 2002

I'm going to start using kokogiak's interface to search Amazon. So much nicer without the list links and suggestion links and treasure chests.
posted by goto11 at 6:33 AM on July 17, 2002

Stav - I understand completely, so re-curl your geek cilia and rest easy ;)

And scottkramer, thanks - and I thought I'd point out the irony that part of my day job is to work on the interface of the "treasure chest" (or gold box if you will).
posted by kokogiak at 7:16 AM on July 17, 2002

For my part, I deliberately refrain from ever clicking on a link that goes to Amazon, from anywhere. Possibly because I'm such a cranky old contrarian bastard.

I love Amazon, but I've been wondering if you could use this Web service to create something populated with Amazon data in which every shopping link goes to an independent online bookseller instead. Has anyone read the developer's agreement?
posted by rcade at 7:27 AM on July 17, 2002

Thought about that too, rcade. There's no technical hurdle to that, but the developer's agrement says in part: "2) You may not link any of the Amazon.com Properties presented on your website to (a) any commercial page of a website other than the Amazon.com Website, or (b) direct traffic to any commercial page of a website other than the Amazon.com Website; and 3) You may not utilize the Amazon.com Properties in a way that could divert sales from the Amazon.com Website, including but not limited to, merchandizing products not offered on the Amazon.com Website."
posted by kokogiak at 7:37 AM on July 17, 2002

Ob Boycott reminder

Amazon.com reported in March 2002 that it had settled its long-running patent-infringement suit against Barnes and Noble over its 1-Click checkout system. The details of the settlement were not disclosed.

Since the terms were not disclosed, we have no way of knowing whether this represents a defeat for Amazon such as would justify ending the boycott. Thus, we encourage everyone to continue the boycott. --www.gnu.org
posted by RavinDave at 7:55 AM on July 17, 2002

Sounds nifty, but I also have the Amazon-no-likey feeling (even though sometimes I do *cringe* buy from them).

Reminds me that I want to become an affiliate of my all-time favorite bookstore, the Tattered Cover, in Denver, CO. They're ultra-cool people, ardent defenders of free speech, and are just generally one of the coolest spots in L-space. (I even got to see Douglas Adams read there once - it was _great_).

They're all hooked in with Booksense, the network of independent bookstores. Good karma, there.
posted by beth at 8:30 AM on July 17, 2002

Agreed. Tattered Cover is the coolest bookstore ever.
posted by sonofsamiam at 9:55 AM on July 17, 2002

I lived in Denver for a year in 1994. I probably made 100 pilgrimages to Tattered Cover. Incredible store.
posted by rcade at 11:22 AM on July 17, 2002

I must also agree with everyone above on the Tattered Cover. I didn't know how nice it really was until I moved away.
posted by thewittyname at 11:38 AM on July 17, 2002

Let's not forget Oxford's own The Inner Bookshop, which is rapidly becoming the only independent bookstore in my town (discounting Blackwells, which really is a chainstore, anyway)
posted by dash_slot- at 7:44 PM on July 17, 2002

matt's thread... different discussion there. :)
posted by hobbes at 10:03 PM on July 17, 2002