haniblog

Amazon finally released a free iPhone app for the UK. Aside from searching for items as you would using a normal browser, this app has an interesting feature called Amazon Remembers. It will let you take a photo of an item you’re interested in, upload the photo and Amazon will try to find it for you. Yes, you read that right. Amazon will analyse the photo and match it to the items available for purchase.

Actually, that’s partly incorrect. The service doesn’t computationally analyse the photo, it uses Mechanical Turk to farm the job out to people who match the photo with items Amazon sells. Mechanical Turk is their online market place for people to carry out repetitive data-based menial jobs for a few cents per task.

When I tried the Remembers feature, the results came back within 15 minutes of the upload. I took a photo of our juicer and kettle and sent them off. The juicer was matched perfectly but it returned a coffee machine instead of the kettle. I’m sure the service will be refined and only improve over time.

It’s clear that Apple created a very compelling platform on which developers are using in inventive and brilliant ways.

I signed up for Amazon’s new Prime service a couple of days ago and so far it’s been really impressive. It costs around £47 annually and all orders that are in the Prime category (which is massive) are delivered the next day for free. There is also an Evening Delivery option which is a bit expensive at £14.67 per order but mind-blowing. If an order is placed before 11.30am it will be delivered the same day between 6.30pm and 9.30pm on weekdays or between 2.30pm and 5.30pm on weekends (and that’s both weekend days as well.) So far it’s only for address within the M25 and Birmingham.

I placed an order midday yesterday and it arrived this morning before 9am. Now that’s service!