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Amazon Hacks For Fun and Money

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sadly-no-hacking-of-prices dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There's a new BusinessWeek article looking at some of the cool hacks coming out of Amazon's open API and XML feed policy. Some nifty stuff - 27,000 developers have apparently signed up to build hacks on Amazon data. It seems '..most are only part-timers and hobbyists, but a growing number are serious programmers who seek to make a living selling products based on the data Amazon is offering on a silver platter.'"

4 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. RIAA Radar by Stormie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    RIAA Radar is a site which may be of interest to Slashdotters, which I presume is done using this Amazon API.. check if a CD was release by an RIAA member label before you buy it!

  2. From the Amazon licensing agreement by mikeophile · · Score: 5, Interesting
    We may modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement, at any time and in our sole discretion, by posting a change notice or a new agreement on our site. If an modification is unacceptable to you, your only recourse is to terminate this agreement. Your continued use of amazon.com web services or the amazon.com properties following our posting of a change notice or new agreement on our site will constitute binding acceptance of the change.

    Given Amazon's track record I suggest you developers check the license daily.

  3. Query? by MadBiologist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've got a ton of books, CD's and assorted merch (VHS tapes, Games, DVD's) that I'd like to catalog. These items all have barcodes, and theoretically Amazon sells a good chunck of them. Is there an app that would sync to Amazon and gather all the pesky details for these items from a simple barcode swipe? I know the there exist such a product as DVD Profiler for my DVD's... but I'd like to stop duplicate purchases if possible. If there isn't, how hard is it to program with Amazon's API? Many Thanks!

    --
    'Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?'
  4. Comparisons between Open Source & Open Data by captbunzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This strikes me as interesting. In some ways, what Amazon is doing here is basically an Open Data initiative. I am trying to draw an analogy between this kind of thing and the Open Source Software movement.

    It is useful to consider the long-term implications of this.

    Let's say that lots of people, sites, companies, etc, start using this lovely, free Amazon data. Then Amazon turns around and tells the world in 3 years that people have to start paying for the data. Kind of a suck-you-in-seeming-"open"-but-not-really kind of trick.

    Makes me think that if Debian was to make a judgement on this, the Debian Free Data Guidelines would declare this as NON-FREE (tm) as Amazon can at any point "change the license".

    Now, who knows if Amazon will ever do this. And no, I don't really read all these bad things into it. I think it is cool for them to make the data (and all) avaiable.

    It just makes me think.

    Maybe we need a GNU General Public License to cover "Open Data". Hmmnn...