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Amaztype

Another Link of the day (found on the Amazon webservices blog): Amaztype runs a query against Amazon web services. Enter a word like U 2 and Amaztype generates the word from product images found via web service at Amazon (com, uk, ca, jp). Very cool. Click on the background to zoom in and hover the cursor over any art cover to view more details. Currently you can query books, music and DVDs. Below you can find one still image example.


amaztype_u2.jpg

While this is an extremaly cool and wonderful application of Amazon webservices, I also find it totally useless. Okay, I am not a typesetter or designer. But who else would make use of such a webpage other than out of pure fun. Don't get me wrong. It is fun! But I would really like to see the business case first...

Another cool feature is Amaztype Zeitgeist which gives us zeitgeist (->?? read wiki and re-evaluate the usage of the term zeitgeist in this context) statistics on queries run against Amaztype. As of this writing, Boa, U2, Tori Amos, Beatles, Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne etc. are the most famous musicians. Quentin Tarantino is the zeigeist director and Warren Ellis a trendy book author. Harry Potter being of course the most zeitgeist book title. You see, this is a cool gimmick, fun to play with but I lost interest once I noticed that Metallica is too long a name to look good. And Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heartclub band does not even fit in the query field. Too bad...

Oh, on a last note: the word Sex (which is certainly short enough) is ranked in the top ten of titles across all media. Interestingly enough it is the only term which is listed *twice* once with 1028 hits (rank #4) and once 607 hits (rank #6).

Questions to think about:

  • Does this tell us something about our zeitgeist?

  • Do we want to have sex twice? (per life, year, months, week, day?)

  • Why is Harry Potter ranked #1 and Cat #2?

  • Are people just to dumb to type the word sex properly?

  • Can someone please make the term sex #1 in Canada? We only need 39 hits to score better than Harry P.

    • Posted by Naturelich on March 30, 2005 8:12 PM |

    Comments

    An additional note. I just visited this webpage again. Currently, from the top 10 zeitgeist queries (at amazon.com) 60% contain a reference to some sexual things. Interestingly enough the query "Tom Hanks" ranks 4th, before Porn, Boobs, Gay and Lesbian.

    Then it struck me: is Tom Hanks really more often on people's minds than Porn or Boobs? At least that's what zeitgeist says as of May 31, 21:30:01 GMT...

    Posted by: Naturelich [TypeKey Profile Page] | May 31, 2005 11:44 PM

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