Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Window Shopping at Amazon

Amazon.com has launched a new site app named WindowShop which is designed to enable you to do exactly that. Mimicking the concept of a store window, Amazon is trying to draw attention to those hot, new books, cds, games and dvds that a store manager might place up front to draw in customers. The application is fun to play with - you can move across categories as well as up and down. For example, if you navigate to a book title Fighter, The Fighters of the UFC (which is the first title in the version I am looking at), using the down arrow button you can view many more books merchandised. Grow tired of books and you can hit the right or left arrow keys to view another category.

By my count there are 10 books selected for inclusion. From the splash page for WindowShop I would rather have been able to chose which category to look at; however, as you use the app. it becomes easier to navigate and this is only a mild inconvenience. For example, if you zoom out so you see all the categories and products, you can hold the left cursor button and move your mouse around the screen to immediately navigate to a new title in any category.

Interestingly, the thing will just play itself and since everything is audio and visual rather than text - book blurbs are read aloud - you can leave it on in the background and come back to it if something gabs your interest.

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