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Amazon Hacks For Fun and Money
Posted by
simoniker
on Wed Jun 25, 2003 10:32 PM
from the sadly-no-hacking-of-prices dept.
from the sadly-no-hacking-of-prices dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There's a new BusinessWeek article looking at some of the cool hacks coming out of Amazon's open API and XML feed policy. Some nifty stuff - 27,000 developers have apparently signed up to build hacks on Amazon data. It seems '..most are only part-timers and hobbyists, but a growing number are serious programmers who seek to make a living selling products based on the data Amazon is offering on a silver platter.'"
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How long until... (Score:4, Troll)
Re:How long until... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long until... (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect it's already been done. A quick USPTO search on "software and price and comparison and internet" yields over 1000 results.
Side note: How can a patent with over 20 references be considered new and innovative? Seriously, that's not genius or inspiration, it's adding 1+1. Looking through the software patents, it's a joke that most of them got granted - the Cheif Patent Officer must be Obvious Guy.
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Re:How long until... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:How long until... (Score:4, Insightful)
What is wrong with investigating a patent fully? If it isn't the job of the patent office, then under whose jurisdiction does it fall?
You note that a patent can be challenged in court, and the fact that this process exists is a good thing, however, you also point out that this would "be very hard for small fish to do against [...] big powerhouse corporations", which flies against the spirit of fairness! Since the legal process is so obviously flawed in civil cases of this nature, the responsibility must pass to the institution that grants these patents in the first place, i.e. the USPTO. You correctly point out that it is not the fault of the patenting process, but that of the legal system. Should one just accept that though? Should the patent system be modified to address this shortcoming?
Naturally, it would be unfair for the US tax-payer to front the charges for the profits of private enterprise, so what should be done? Forcing a charge on a per-patent basis would only harm the spirit of invention for individuals, which would be an awful tragedy.
I get frustrated when witnessing large businesses patent "obvious" and otherwise-harmful ideas whilst those inventors with true commercial and innovative spirit are exploited for the simple reason that they lack the power to defend themselves.
Time to dismount for the high-horse, me thinks. Sorry.. :)
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Re:How long until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Itâ(TM)s called acknowledging your sources. Letâ(TM)s say I come up with some new, innovative way to clone mammals that is 100% successful. Letâ(TM)s say I want to patent my new, innovative process. Letâ(TM)s say the first step of my process involves cleaning and sterilizing the apparatus is a way that has been documented previously. Rather than 1) restating a procedure that has already been documented, and 2) taking credit for someone elseâ(TM)s work, I would reference the original publication of the sterilization procedure. In the jargon of patents, that is prior art. And it in no way affects the patent-worthiness of my innovation.
If someone devised a method of delivering food over the internet with TCP/IP, I bet that would be a good candidate for a patent. There doesnâ(TM)t seem to be any obvious way to transport physical food by TCP/IP. But part of the patent application would have to reference the prior existence of TCP/IP. Itâ(TM)s called prior art. Its existence does not automatically invalidate the patent.
Seriously dude, everything you read on
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Re:How long until... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
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O'Reilly book on Amazon Hacks (Score:5, Informative)
It's mentioned in the article, but this is slashdot....
Amazon Hacks [oreilly.com]
How long... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:O'Reilly book on Amazon Hacks (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Since when... (Score:5, Informative)
No, it doesn't. [astrian.net]
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I wonder (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, who would have thunk it? "one-click"! This certainly is the pinnacle of innovation and ingenuity. Sure is a good thing they patented this... otherwise who knows what might happen if such power was available to mere mortals? Inconcievable!
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Funny)
I do not think this word means what you think it means.
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Re:I wonder (Score:3, Funny)
amazon's strategy (Score:5, Informative)
Uses... (Score:5, Interesting)
Will Amazon own the "hacks"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh the sound of a thousand rushing patents...
Re:Will Amazon own the "hacks"? (Score:5, Informative)
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RIAA Radar (Score:5, Interesting)
RIAA Radar [magnetbox.com] is a site which may be of interest to Slashdotters, which I presume is done using this Amazon API.. check if a CD was release by an RIAA member label before you buy it!
Web Services Ignition (Score:5, Insightful)
They still don't get it. You can't force an industry. It's usually the guys on the ground level making cool things with the technology that drive it's success.
Becaus of this, the Amazon [amazon.com] and Google [google.com] services are going to be huge in driving the web services industry.
For example this site... (Score:5, Informative)
Neat!
Re:For example this site... (Score:4, Funny)
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Cool hacks (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be great if they guy hooked it up to Froogle and made it work on a PDA - you could buy anything you saw, anywhere, for the cheapest price you could find on the web, while you were in a real store!
(runs off to fill out a patent form...)
Re:Cool hacks (Score:5, Funny)
This would be great if they guy hooked it up to Froogle and made it work on a PDA - you could buy anything you saw, anywhere, for the cheapest price you could find on the web, while you were in a real store!
(runs off to fill out a patent form...)
* Moderating...
Let's see:
- Bashed DMCA... Check (pointlessly, but all the better)
- Bashed Patents... Check
- Bashed SCO... FAIL
- Bashed Microsoft... FAIL
- Bashed **AA... FAIL
- Referenced "Good Technology (tm)", eg. Linux/Google/GNU/GPL... Check
- Referenced Geek Toy... FAIL (Close, but "PDA" is not "Zaurus")
You had a good post, but it could have looked like this:
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Regardless of what you think about Amzaon opening up it's API and inventory data, this [ipilot.net] is a nifty product. Scan something anywhere and get the Amazon data on it. Now I comparision shop Amazon with BestBuy, Circuit City, or B&N while I am at the store. (Ha! I bet the bigwigs at M$ would LOVE if I comparison shopped Linux vs. XPee, let's not even MENTION SCO!)
This would be great if they guy hooked it up to Froogle and made it work on a Zaurus - you could buy anything you saw, anywhere, for the cheapest price you could find on the web, while you were in a real store! (I bet the RIAA would object, though, what with their PRICE FIXING WAYS. Bastards.)
(runs off to fill out a patent form... before Amazon does!)
Oh, also, I HATE THE DMCA!!!! VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!
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Learn from the master.
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From the Amazon licensing agreement (Score:5, Interesting)
Given Amazon's track record I suggest you developers check the license daily. [amazon.com]
Compare it to Ebay (Score:4, Informative)
They (meaning idiot analysts for the most part) always say the real battle is between Ebay and Amazon for the future of online commerce. Amazon's got the right idea here, at least when it comes to getting their brand out free. Too bad it costs so much to list...
Re:Compare it to Ebay (Score:3, Informative)
It doesn't really cost anything to list on Amazon. When you start out as a seller you only pay Amazon a comission if you sell something. You can list as many items as you want for free.
If you sell in volume then you pay 40$ a month to list and have access to inventory tools etc... If you would list on Ebay you would pay much more than 40$ a month in listing fee for the same volume of listings.
eBay Strikes Me As Very Vulnerable... (Score:4, Interesting)
eBay Strikes Me As Very Vulnerable... to a distributed auction service run through Kazaa or something. Probably the only thing that stops someone from totally killing eBay with distributed auctions is a silly patent; but even silly patents will run out within most of our lifetimes.
Of course, verifying who is who on a p2p network is a challenge, but picture this: The RIAA et. al. may force p2p networks to provide user identification.
Don't see that as a crisis--see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to kill PayPal.
Of course eBay has tremendous brand recognition, but what happens if somebody starts streaming price comparisons (from Amazon?) through a p2p? Commision-free auctions are just one click from there, if you'll pardon my pun. Then, the patent issue devolves into what it really is, which is just a brawl between corporate legal budgets. Amazon/p2p/hackers vs. eBay/Paypal sounds like a great main event after all the warmup fights we've seen.
Of course eBay has brand recognition. So did Studebaker and DuMont.
I'd better hurry up and patent my business method of taking online wagers based on the size of corporate legal's payroll. Oh... wait... a bunch of online brokers have prior art.
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Are they still... (Score:5, Informative)
You know it... (Score:5, Funny)
Said m0rp3us, leader of the group "3y3 0f th3 d0g," "zero-click" will order various items automatically using already stored in a user's billing info.
"All they have to do is sign-in once and they're done. The stuff basically orders itself after that," he said, " and delivered to your home. It's like Christmas every day!"
When asked if he will patent the new technology, Jeff Bezos declined comment, but did mention that the technology was responsible for three new automobiles and a new town that he was going to play with later.
Amazon.com's shares were up with the news.
Query? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Query? (Score:4, Funny)
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Perl (Score:5, Informative)
I wish Google would listen up. (Score:3, Insightful)
This means that coders who have tools that are based on Google results (say, some sort of link popularity checking tool) then have to either grab Google the regular way and try their darn best to pretend they're a regular visitor.. or get multiple API keys, which is against the T&Cs.
Of course, I can see why Google is doing this, simply because there's no benefit for them if people just leech their results, but....
useful and fun stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
feels like amazon coming home (Score:3, Interesting)
this is that, all over again
This is my favorite Amazon hack (Score:5, Informative)
My site uses Amazon XML feeds (Score:3, Informative)
DVD Jones [dvdjones.com]
It's a DVD cataloging (and sharing) site that offers recommendations from Amazon filtering out what you already own.
Comparisons between Open Source & Open Data (Score:5, Interesting)
It is useful to consider the long-term implications of this.
Let's say that lots of people, sites, companies, etc, start using this lovely, free Amazon data. Then Amazon turns around and tells the world in 3 years that people have to start paying for the data. Kind of a suck-you-in-seeming-"open"-but-not-really kind of trick.
Makes me think that if Debian was to make a judgement on this, the Debian Free Data Guidelines would declare this as NON-FREE (tm) as Amazon can at any point "change the license".
Now, who knows if Amazon will ever do this. And no, I don't really read all these bad things into it. I think it is cool for them to make the data (and all) avaiable.
It just makes me think.
Maybe we need a GNU General Public License to cover "Open Data". Hmmnn...
Re:Comparisons between Open Source & Open Data (Score:4, Informative)
For those just awakening from a coma, CDDB started by encouraging people to voluntarily build up their database of music CD fingerprints. Then, when they had enough, they started charging people (developers, mainly) to access the data other people had collected for them. There's nothing keeping Amazon from letting people develop cool hacks over the next few years, then either turning off the service or modifying the terms to such an extent that noone uses it anymore, but using those hacks (developed by others) themselves.
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Great for Affiliate Programs (Score:3, Insightful)
This could easily solve that. Someone should be able to write a script that can display X number of items fitting these keywords and that listing can be totally customized and worked into your existing web pages quite well resulting in more sales for Amazon and a bigger referral check every quarter.
I praise Amazon for doing this.
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Amazon will be selling their own un-skewing software, for anyone that wishes to know the truth behind what they thought they knew the truth behind before.
This process of releasing skewed data has been patented, and is known as 'Salty Skew 42-Click'.
hut!...hut!...hut!
patent posts (Score:4, Insightful)
I advocate buying from Amazon to reward their giving so many features to end users. We take Amazon for granted now, but we should be thankful for their accomplishments. Amazon is chock full of cool features that might have existed in labs or in peoples imaginations, but weren't available for real users until Amazon put them out there: purchase circles, user reviews, multiple competing industry reviews, page previews, author interviews, people-who-bought-this-also-bought info, real-time best seller lists, real-time popularity indicators, wish lists, user-created theme lists, recommendation agents, used book stores/zshops, great searching and great sorting of results... all on the same site, in one place, easily navigable -- fantastic. Really, it's one thing to have an idea and hack it up for a few geek friends to use, it's another thing to put such a powerful toolset as Amazon is in the hands of millions of ordinary users. Not only does Amazon lead the industry, it really created online book selling the way it is today. If it were not for Amazon, the Barnes & Noble online site would probably look a lot like bookstore.com [bookstore.com], or worse maybe even B Dalton's web site. [bdalton.com]
Amazon rocks, and the APIs are just one more example of that.
A cool Amazon demo for Mozilla (Score:5, Informative)
Mozilla also has support for various web services, SOAP, XML-RPC and more making it ideal to capitalize on burgeoning amount of raw data in XML sites such as Amazon are offering these days.
Re:Is it genius? (Score:5, Insightful)
By first establishing themselves as a complete "product", i.e. "Amazon", people will now recognize these portal'd Amazon links as something new but still part of the Amazon-whole.
If they had simply introduced this ability from the beginning, they risked other companies somehow taking advantage of it to make it appear as if the "store" was the secondary-site, as opposed to Amazon itself.
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Amazon is one of many (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of product datafeeds isn't really that new either. You will find the hotel industry allowing datafeeds and other low level integration.
Amazon is giving better quality lower level access to data than many others. But are not as many leagues ahead as the Business Week article seems to indicate.
I guess I should mention the annoying thing. The people playing this amazon datafeed game are creating millions upon millions of web pages with different terms optimized for the search engines. The general result is a marked increase in the number of webpages to index, and a decrease in the quality of search engine results.
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Re:The Mcdonald analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
Utter BS. More so than ever companies are realizing that continuous improvement is neccesary to remain competitive. Do a google on "six sigma", an process improvement methodology which started out at Motorola after a Arizona State Univ. PhD came up with the program and has balooned in the number of companies that use the six sigma methodology. For many Deming, Juran and Taguchi, the classic gurus of quality, are praised as gods. Or check out www.asq.org (American Socity of Quality) Engineers are just starting to realize the power of Experimental Design (DoE) and statistics, which current computer technology now allows even those with just basic statistical backgrounds to perform advanced statistical tests and interpret the results easily. The list goes on. Improvement is the norm, not the exception in countries such as Japan, which were in a full on quality revolution in the 60's-70's with the help of Deming, leaving America aghast and having American companies beg for his help after turning him away in the 50's and 60's. Only fairly recently has America started to catch on to quality.
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Re:The Mcdonald analogy (Score:3, Interesting)
It already happens. All of the big chains (PepsiCo (i.e. TacoBell, PizzaHut, HotNNow, etc.), McDonalds, etc.) use simulations+data/video to improve their drive-through
Some corps decided that a pure FIFO is best on average, where McD decided to let people get out of line and wait (if the order is unusual) -- So it has been reported that some McD people (w
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA (Score:5, Informative)
That's about what I can piece together knowing what I do about slashdot, television, and bad 80's comedians.
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