New Amazon iPhone App

I love Amazon.com. I buy my music from Amazon’s mp3 store. I buy books and newspapers for my Kindle from Amazon via Whispernet. I even buy my favorite nutrition shake (kind of hokey, yes, but delicious and good for me), mix1, in bulk from Amazon.

So I was excited to see that Amazon had released an iPhone app. Amazon.com is, in my opinion, the best-designed shopping web site out there. The information on the site is so valuable and accessible that I find myself using it to find new books and music all the time – even when I’m not planning on purchasing the item from Amazon. Because of this, it goes without saying that I expected a lot when I started the Amazon.com iPhone app download. Still, being that I don’t do much shopping from my iPhone, why would I be so excited about this? Well, I knew that Amazon’s iPhone app would be well done, and I was interested to see if they had added any revolutionary new features to it.

And I wasn’t disappointed. The app itself is very simple. It doesn’t aim to do much, but what it does, it does well.

Using the app, you can search Amazon.com and “over 9,000 other merchants”. Once you find something you’re interested in, you can read user reviews, buy the item with Amazon’s “1-Click” (assuming you have it setup, of course), add the item to a persistent shopping cart, or add the item to your wish list. The interface is simple but very effective.

Now on to the “wow” feature: “Amazon Remembers”. You can use your iPhone to take a picture of something you are interested in searching for on Amazon.com. Once the picture is taken, the app compresses it, sends it up to Amazon.com, and lets you know that Amazon.com is “searching for a similar product and will notify you if” they find one. If they do find the product, they’ll send you an email with a link to the item and save your “Amazon Remembers” item in the iPhone app and in your Amazon.com profile.

I tested the feature out by taking a picture of my Logitech mouse. Within five minutes, I had received an email with a link back to the exact same mouse on Amazon.com. When will I use this? I’m not sure, but I am sure that it will come in handy sometime.