Whatever the market will bear. Did you know that Amazon.com charges you different prices for the same goods depending on who you are (and what your browser cookie shows?) This was news to me, but the WaPo and CNN reported it in 2005.
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

Amazon.com dropped a bombshell on the publishing industry with the announcement on Friday that they will no longer allow print on demand books printed by vendors other than Amazon, to be sold directly by Amazon. In other words, use our print services or lose your listing on our site. This decision effects over half a million books listed on their site and could be a defining moment for both publishing and the future of online retailing.
posted on Apr 3, 2008 - View this thread

A British TV crew have been accused of spreading flu to a remote Peruvian tribe of 250 members, leading to 4 deaths.
posted on Mar 27, 2008 - View this thread

Philip M. Parker^[1][2] has written and published over 85,000 books on Amazon in the past few years, although by his own count the total published is over 200,000. He is like a writing machine - in fact, he has created a machine that churns out an original book about every 20 minutes. A few sample titles:
posted on Feb 8, 2008 - View this thread

The murky demimonde of Amazon's Top Reviewers. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, but I had imagined Amazon's customer reviews as a refuge from the machinations of the publishing industry: "an intelligent and articulate conversation ... conducted by a group of disinterested, disembodied spirits..."
posted on Jan 28, 2008 - View this thread

Straight from the Department of Things Everybody But Me Probably Knew About Two Years Ago, it was only yesterday that I discovered the mind-boggling usefulness of the Amazon Filler Item Finder, which allows you to enter the exact price of the item you need to pad your order up to $25.00 for free shipping. Happy postage-free holidays.
posted on Dec 4, 2007 - View this thread

Earlier this week this story about illegal uranium sales was in the news. Had they been thinking they could have ordered online here and here. BTW, check out what else customers are buying.
posted on Dec 1, 2007 - View this thread

So, whatcha readin? The John Ashcroft Alberto Gonzales Michael Mukasey Book Club wants to discuss your latest reads. Amazon thinks it's none of their business. So does your librarian. While it may seem that your reading list is safe, fact is you're actually just one National Security Letter or subpoena away from full disclosure. Want to change that? One step in the right direction would be to contact your Senator about getting S.2088 out of Committee and on to the floor. Oh, and tell them to vote for it. And then to override the veto.
posted on Nov 28, 2007 - View this thread

Amazon's Jeff Bezos wants to change the way we read. Amazon's new e-book reader, Kindle, is not just a device, it's a service. With EVDO wireless connectivity you can download content to your Kindle any time any place. "This is not your grandfather’s e-book," said one publishing executive to the New York Times. "If these guys can’t make it work, I see no hope."
posted on Nov 18, 2007 - View this thread

The Green vs. the Brown Amazon. The future Amazon rain forest.
posted on Nov 15, 2007 - View this thread

New York State goes after Amazon "affiliates." So if you, as a New Yorker, link to your book on Amazon, you are now an independent contractor and shall be taxed accordingly (PDF).
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

Harriet Klausner, 55, is Amazon's #1 book reviewer, with almost 15,000 book reviews in the past 8 years or slightly over 5 per day. Her coveted position in the highly competitive world of Amazon review rankings has earned her accolades from Time Magazine, a write-up in Wired Magazine, and more than a little snarky skepticism from other reviewers. If you like her taste in books, she keeps an archive of reviews.
posted on Nov 3, 2007 - View this thread

Fly Jumpers Junior are a new product that give the wearer near-superhuman abilities, according to the promotional video on this amazon UK page. The vid also includes a surprising, albeit hilarious gory ending. The problem? These are Fly Jumpers Junior, aimed at kids. As one reviewer has already noted, isn't this a bit too much for advertising a product aimed at children?
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

CreateSpace is the new name of Amazon's on-demand self-publishing service for the super long tail of books, audio CD's and film DVD/Blue-ray. Products automatically get an ISBN number and are listed on Amazon.com, including "Search Inside" for books. The National Archives and CreateSpace will be publishing movies from its collection of over 200,000 public domain films, raising some provocative copyright issues.
posted on Aug 8, 2007 - View this thread

Wired presents an extraordinary look at "one of the most ambitious search-and-rescue missions in history," after one of Microsoft's researchers, Jim Gray, and his boat, the Tenacious, went missing in the Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco in January 2007. Cartography meets law meets 2.0 technology. "First the Coast Guard scoured 132,000 square miles of ocean. Then a team of scientists and Silicon Valley power players turned the eyes of the global network onto the Pacific." Eventually, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, the US Navy, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium jumped in – "as did astronomers from leading universities." To this day, Jim Gray has never been found, and his disappearance cannot be explained. Read Wired for more.
posted on Jul 22, 2007 - View this thread

Martin Strel finishes 3272-mile swim through the Amazon River. BBC has an FAQ, and here are videos of Strel passing various checkpoints. Thing to avoid while swimming in the Amazon: the toothpick fish, aka the candiru. [previously]
posted on Apr 9, 2007 - View this thread

The most expensive things at Amazon, by category.
$255,000 for a House Number? How about a million dollar space suit from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin? Or maybe you just need a $40,000 Super Bowl XL coffee table book (Free shipping, of course) Don't miss the reviews...
posted on Mar 23, 2007 - View this thread

Amazon-ian Warrior. An unassuming Canadian chap has been quietly submitting ludicrous reviews of products sold on Amazon.com for nearly 5 years. For example, his detailed commentary on George P Joyce's A Comparative Analysis of Two Alternatives to Chemical Aircraft Paint Stripping:

Joyce is an alchemist, taking the leaden medium of technical report writing, and transmuting it with his warm spirit, pouring his pen over the obscured voices of the chemical aircraft paint strippers like a mellifluous caramel gold; redeeming them in a universal chorus of aircraft paint strippers, their individual spirits vibrating like strings in a cosmic harp.

Part of the fun is seeing how many people rated each review as helpful; for example, he gets 100% approval for his comments on Flautist Angel Statuette (This 'flautist angel' is crude, eschewing classical representation to debase itself in the distortions of folk art. A freak frisson of masochism prompted me to order an item that believes human anatomy is modelled upon slurry running from a faucet. Look at it.) while virtually no-one was impressed by his analysis of How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America (Thought-provoking. I did not know that the "heart of America" is an actual item the Conservatives won in a game of squash in 1972; I assumed it was a metaphor.) Since Amazon started adding RSS feeds and enabling comments on reviews, he finally appears to be starting to reach an audience; those wishing to keep updated with his sporadic but fantastic work may appreciate this handy Feedburner URL.
posted on Jan 22, 2007 - View this thread

"I yearn for that kind of a backpacking trip minus the bears." "I was much the happy to know this man was tremendously eaten ferociously by the grizzly bear." "Not bad but not enough black chicks."

The work of these online reviewers may not merit their own special edition, but they're special in their own way. Doc Savage reviews 200+ items on Amazon, most of which he hates, unless they involve black women and/or Carly Simon. At Netflix, HV from Duvall is not nearly as prolific, but gets 5 stars for sublimely anfractuous English. And DJAkin over at IMDB has written nearly 500 reviews, although most of them read like Jackie Harvey's Mad Libs. He (or she) may not be the next A. O. Scott, but if you can find me a critic with a more sincere and unsnarked love of cinema, I'll eat my britches.
posted on Jan 8, 2007 - View this thread

Top 'BRANDS' 2006, 2005, 2004 - Current List and Achive Overview on How survey was done.... What BRANDS have the most recognition and are the most popular with Americans? Here are the results of the current annual survey and achives from the past two years "With the multitude of brand choices available to consumers, this survey is an important indicator of consumer activity and its correlation to social behavior .... Companies that can provide a clear and consistent brand to consumers, as well as harmonize with social changes will find themselves in a promising position, as illustrated by top-ranking brands..."
posted on Jan 8, 2007 - View this thread

Amazon founder test-launches spacecraft. Want to get a job at Blue Origin? For some reason, he didn't use the relatively nearby and somewhat innacurately-named Spaceport America...
posted on Jan 4, 2007 - View this thread

The Pororoca is an Amazonian tidal bore that generates waves up to 12 feet high which can last for over half an hour. Surfers from all around the world have visited Brazil in order to ride this mega-wave. Here are some videos:

The Pororoca Phenomenon (4:28)
Pororoca 1 of 2 (3:11)
Pororoca 2 of 2 (3:21)
Pororoca (26 minutes long)

Do not cuddle with the Giant Amazonian Centipede, no matter how strong the temptation may be. Fully grown they are as long as an adult human's forearm, and gleefully feed on small critters (youtube), going so far as to snag bats out of the air (google video) & devour them on the spot.
posted on Nov 21, 2006 - View this thread

Gotta Love Amazon's Product Tags. Another milepost for the K-Fed meme.
posted on Nov 3, 2006 - View this thread

African dust storms [pic] have been suspected of causing fish-killing red tide in the Caribbean, but also of mitigating the effect of hurricanes. Now analysis of images from NASA's MODIS satellite have revealed the Bodélé, a region of the Sahara not far from Lake Chad, as the source of more than half the material that fertilises the Amazon rainforest.
posted on Nov 1, 2006 - View this thread

In a corporate jet flying 37,000 feet above the Amazon rainforest, I heard the three words I will never forget: “We’ve been hit.”
posted on Oct 3, 2006 - View this thread

Amazon launched a new video download service today. It claims to be simple to use and features some superb movies. But are Amazon and the other major vendors missing the point? Will consumers pay for legitimate content with severe limitations on use or will they simply find ways of creating their own unrestricted versions?
posted on Sep 8, 2006 - View this thread

Websites that changed the world? This Observer piece lists fifteen websites that aught to be considered the best of the web. It's a bold claim and although the potted histories are excellent, I'm wondering the extent to which it mostly includes website that have broken the public recognition barrier in the uk rather than changing the world. How many are simply pioneers in their field? Where for example is flickr?
posted on Aug 13, 2006 - View this thread

Effective Against Elton John. Amazon starts selling groceries online. People start reviewing their products. Hilarity ensues.
posted on Aug 6, 2006 - View this thread

The Amazon rainforest becomes "a desert" after three consecutive years without rain - the trees die. Next year would be the third year of an ongoing drought. The forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon (or about 45 years of stored human emmisions at current rates) - 3/4's of the carbon is released within a year of dieing. The Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction".
posted on Jul 25, 2006 - View this thread

Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher Not quite as politically charged as Real Time or Politically Incorrect, it's Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher. Previous guests include: Jon Favreau, Dean Koontz, The Dixie Chicks and Josh Ritter.
posted on Jun 15, 2006 - View this thread

So. Paul Bausch of all sorts of fame rolled-out an update to his amazing Amazon feed-builder. What's the big deal? Well, I'm a big fan of Wendell Berry and Craig Thompson, of Naguib Mahfouz and books about New Urbanism... and now, with the help of PB's delicious feed-builder, I'll be notified whenever something new comes from any of these authors or meets the "New Urbanism" search criteria, so I can add them to my Amazon wish list... and I think that's pretty darn cool. Add that to Amazon's pre-existing wish list feeds, which let you monitor other people's wish lists for additions ( you can find a wish list's feed on its "home" page ), and I'm in heaven.

( As a direct result of the feeds I subscribed to this weekend, my Amazon wish list has grown from 1600 to more than 1800 items. I blame Paul... he's such an enabler! )
posted on Jun 12, 2006 - View this thread

Amazon S3, now for the masses. Amazon S3 has been discussed previously, but several user-facing services have appeared in the last few weeks that allow ordinary non-programmer end users to take advantage of it. One of the most useful of these appears to be Jungle Disk, a free front-end (free beer!) that lets you use S3 as a webdav-mounted disk drive. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and there's GPL code available (free speech!) that lets other people develop alternative compatible front-ends.
posted on May 18, 2006 - View this thread

A9 Maps now combines Amazon's BlockView images in another ajax map interface (with the maps by Mapquest, interestingly). Amazon has been driving around major cities taking photos of each block and now as you browse the map, street-level images come up alongside. The interface isn't quite intuitive, but it is nice to see the idea coming together.
posted on May 16, 2006 - View this thread

A9 gets MS? Amazon's search tool / portal, formerly powered by Google, is now using Microsoft's Windows Live search service. I first noticed when my image results went missing (which sucks, but I still use it for the incentive program). Does this mean MS is shifting out of the half-assery phase of its search strategy? What happens when its adCenter keyword program opens up? [commentary]
posted on May 14, 2006 - View this thread

Amazon launched S3: Unlimited Simple Storage. Take advantage of Amazon's global infrastructure to serve content, store data, and serve bittorrents.
posted on Mar 15, 2006 - View this thread

'You really liked it, huh? You really thought it was good?'
He regaled one friend with memories of being in the womb, took another shopping for jerseys in Paris, and said he regretted calling his play Godot. As the centenary of his birth approaches, 'Beckett Remembering Remembering Beckett'. More inside.
posted on Feb 26, 2006 - View this thread

There is a new question asking website. It is powered by humans via the Mechanical Turk program. Said the Gramophone has a bit of fun with it.
posted on Feb 18, 2006 - View this thread

Amazon's "Top Selling Videos" Here's a mystery: Amazon has a page showing their top selling VHS videos. It is "updated hourly." Before you look at what the top sellers are, take a guess. I doubt that anyone would think that the 1994 Richard Simmons "Sweating to the Oldies" video would be listed as No. 1 -- particularly in view of the fact that it is described as being "unavailable." The others in the top 10 are also interesting: #3 is the 1945 black and white "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". Would you guess that #7 is "Fatso", a 1993 comedy starring Dom DeLuise? I may be wrong but I suspect that Amazon's ratings are not accurate. Now I wonder about their book ratings . . .
posted on Feb 10, 2006 - View this thread

"Buy Stock in Ipods. Or Da Vinci Codes." Steve Odom's Smarkets is a web-based stock trading game (and market experiment) based on Amazon.com sales rank. (via jayisgames)
posted on Dec 22, 2005 - View this thread

The mystery of Qwert Shmarble--solved! If you've ever wondered how stunningly useful items like Qwert Shmarble end up on Amazon, here's the inside story, from the former Amazon temp who wrote the user manual to the NM-156 Reciprocating Emu Press.
posted on Dec 5, 2005 - View this thread

From 1964 to 1992, Texaco (.mov, 20.6MB) drilled for oil in the northern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, known as the "Oriente". The company left 627 open toxic waste pits and other facilities which continue to leak highly toxic waste, affecting more than 30,000 local people. A higher incidence of birth defects, cancer, miscarriages, skin diseases, and death continues to plague people whose only source of water is a contaminated river. ChevronTexaco refuses to remediate the damage, claiming that they already "cleaned up" their share of the contract, by shoveling 3 feet of dirt over some of the open oil pits.
posted on Nov 12, 2005 - View this thread

Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it. In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen’s "Turk" was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. Excuse me? Ah, yes. The Mechanical Turk, by Amazon.
posted on Nov 3, 2005 - View this thread

"This book isn't as good as Harry Potter in MY opinion, and no one can refute me. Tastes are relative!" A review of Orwell's 1984 on Amazon, from a list compiled by Matthew Baldwin at The Morning News with a selection of the funniest one-star reviews of books from Time's list of the 100 best novels.
posted on Oct 23, 2005 - View this thread

The Next Generation Rabbit Pearl Wireless Vibrator is just one of a range of products in Amazon's sex shop.
posted on Aug 20, 2005 - View this thread

The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection . "From Edwin A. Abbott to Emile Zola, the 1,082 titles in the Penguin Classics Complete Library total nearly half a million pages." The weight of the books is approximately 700 pounds. Amazon is offering free shipping! I wonder how big the box would be waiting at my door. (via)
posted on Jun 28, 2005 - View this thread

"When they emerged after 50 yards, the landscape no longer looked anything like the southern edge of the Amazon forest. It looked like Iowa." In Mato Grosso, Brazil the rainforest is vanishing. And all because of soybeans and beef. "If we were an aggressive tribe, we would have killed the land owners already," said Tupxi, one of the canoeists, who estimated his age at 77. " good Washpost story...
posted on Jun 12, 2005 - View this thread

Newt Gingrich's Amazon book reviews. "Speaker Gingrich is an avid reader. He does not review all of the books he reads. You will not find any bad reviews here, just the books he thinks you might enjoy."
posted on Jun 7, 2005 - View this thread

Abusing Amazon images. And you thought URL manipulation was a lost art.
posted on May 26, 2005 - View this thread

Metafilter has discussed the tsunami this year, and the dreadful aftermath, especially on childrenbefore, and we have discussed the various forms relief efforts can take. Old Skool web journaler turned author (book 1)(book 2) (book 3) organizes book drives every year for libraries. This year, she is organizing donors to supply basic school supplies for children in areas hit hard by the tsunami. The Kancheepuram District she is targeting for help has a large child labour problem, so giving these children what they need for an education is more than just books and pencils - it is a way to help them avoid the fate of so many of their peers, and to transition from 'child labourer' to 'child'. Pam is partnering with Asha for education. Her readers donated enough to hit the first two goals (approx $7000.00 so far), and the goal now is to supply every child in the region - $11,428 in total.

It costs $4.61 USD to supply one child with an educational kit.
posted on May 20, 2005 - View this thread