Amazon Remembers Peter

An iphone application that I downloaded but haven’t used was the Amazon.com app. I recently opened it up and took a look at it. I was especially interested in the Amazon Remembers feature. You take pictures, using your iphone, of things you would like to remember, through the application. And if Amazon offers a similar product, they will let you know.

One of the things I like to do when I test applications or services is to do things with them that the developers did not intend. So in this case, I took a photo of my son Peter. He is not someone I would soon forget, but I would like to remember him, nevertheless.

Soon after uploading the photo, Amazon sent me an email with a link for a boys size basketball t-shirt. The results also show up in the application. I was pretty impressed. I did not pay attention to the shirt he had on, but it was a basketball related shirt. My first question was how did they know to recommend a boys size? How could they tell he was a boy?

After I received the email, I read more about the service and discovered that a community of real people review the photos and make recommendations from Amazon’s products. Now it made perfect sense how they knew to send a boys sized shirt.

One problem I have with the service relates to what the application does with the photos. The photos are not saved to my iphone photo album. It only lives in the Amazon application and on the Amazon website. As someone who obsessively keeps all my photos, especially ones of my kids, I have no way to access this photo. Other applications, like Brightkite, save photos to my iphone album as well uploading it to the places I indicated.

The other problem I have would actually improve the accuracy of the recommendations. There is no way to tag a photo or note what item you are interested in. This would not have helped in my example, because there is no telling what the response would have been if I tagged my photo 11 year old boy. That is not part of Amazon’s current product offerings.

Even with these shortcomings, this is a great way for Amazon to continue to chip away at brick and mortar businesses. If the email comes quickly enough, as others have in further tests, this is a way for consumers to price shop on things they don’t need immediately. Snap a photo in the store and know Amazon’s price before you leave the aisle. If you have used it on this free app, it’s worth a try.

Bass Pro Shop

While in Florida, my mom took us to the Bass Pro Shop because she thinks it’s a neat store. I don’t usually go to stores for the experience, especially if it is an experience that I am not interested in, like fishing or hunting. Anyway, if you have ever wondered what a store like this looks like, look at the photo. This is part of the fishing section.

Black Friday Sneaker Shopping

Every Black Friday, while in Florida, we wake up early and go to the Nike Outlet store in Estero, Florida to buy the kids new sneakers. We have been there as early as 6:00am in the past, but this year we got there about 7:00am.

Black Friday Sneaker Shopping Part 1 from Jeff Cohen on Vimeo.

Black Friday Sneaker Shopping Part 2 from Jeff Cohen on Vimeo.

Black Friday Sneaker Shopping Part 3 from Jeff Cohen on Vimeo.

Please note that in a better world, these three videos would be edited into one, but I haven’t yet been able to make that happen easily. Any suggestions for a PC, and Windows MovieMaker doesn’t recognize the mpeg format from my camera?

Rampant Consumerism

Notice: This post does not contain any links because I do not feel like promoting these brands any more than I already am by writing about them. If you need to find something out about one of the things mentioned in this post, try Google. I hear they have a pretty good collection of web links.

This weekend we went to the mall. I am not normally a mall shopper, but my folks were here for Grace’s birthday and my mom wanted to shop with Grace. We started with Barnes and Noble for some books. Grace wanted a High School Musical book, and I only agreed if she would get a non-licensed book of my choosing. I picked a mystery about Blackbeard. Peter got a Warriors book. It is a series about anthropomorphic cats divided up into clans. He has read them all and the latest just came out.

Next stop, The Apple Store. My mom got a pink ipod shuffle while the kids played with iphones. Then on to Build-a-Bear. Grace made a High School Musical Bear. She named it Troy, after a character from the show. She also purchased at High School Musical T-Shirt and Track Suit. She added a basketball and cell phone. This was pretty horrible. It don’t even think I can take a picture of this. At least the Hello Kitty pajamas for her stuffed cat she got several years ago were cute. On the way out of Build-a-Bear we spotted the Hannah Montana cardboard cut-out. It was my idea to take the picture, but Grace was happy to oblige.

Walking to our next stop, we passed Mrs. Fields. Some expensive cookies were in order. It was cheaper than stopping for lunch. And finally, our last stop was Sports Fan Attic to get Peter a football jersey. Even though it was Grace’s birthday, my mom wanted to get Peter something. He chose a Carolina Panthers “Kasey” jersey. It was a fitting end to our mall visit. Sports properties for boys and entertainment properties for girls. Blue and pink are so last century.