Custom Amazon.com app has yet another recognizer

The Amazon.com app, released at the end of November, has a smooth if slightly limited interface in case the mobile version of their site (which Safari will serve by default) is not iPhone-tailored to your liking. The available options are at least as much like the mobile site as the mobile site is like the PC site (which can be visited from your iPhone if you insist) … enough alike that it’s almost boring. Some tracking (Recently Viewed) is not synched with the other sites, though all your lists are.

The news, coming on top of SnapTell’s popularity, is a beta function called “Amazon Remembers” which accepts a camera shot of any product and tries to find it for sale in Amazon’s extended bazaar. The twist: real humans look at your transmission. (Shades of Yahoo Search!) The putative humans snappily identified two books from the early 1970’s that SnapTell never could figure out, and another that ST had comically misidentified in a different way each try. On the other hand, you can leave yourself open to some witticisms from the presumably bored “research” team: as when I sent in a shot of an old New Balance running shoe — not real old, the direct predecessor of a current model, but well-used. I would have been glad to find where I could buy a pair of the old model, whose fit I liked, but instead was offered New Balance Shoe Cleaner, 8oz., as a consolation prize. Pretty funny, guys, you passed the Turing test!