Junk I Want - Easy and Flexible Wishlist Embedding

Tom Sprows recently wrote to tell me about his new tool JunkIWant. This tool simplifies the process of embedding an Amazon Wishlist in a blog page, a MySpace page, or even a regular web site.

You have a choice of 4 different styles, along with control of colors. You can specify your wishlist by id or by email address. Once you have made your selection you will be provided with the HTML code needed to embed the JunkIWant applet on the site of your choice.

I asked Tom to tell me about some of the interesting challenges he faced while building his site. He noted that he created a proxy application so that he could call the Amazon E-Commerce Service, as well as a caching mechanism to ensure that he stayed within the Terms of Service. Tom notes that "The Amazon ESC was pretty easy to work with.  The tough part was providing the configuration and interaction with the Flash Applet."

We'll look forward to seeing more cool and useful applications from Tom; he told me that "I had alot of fun with this project and will continue to look at Amazon web services for future business opportunities."

-- Jeff;

Comments

[Tim McGhee]

It would be nice if Amazon would make the wish list and associte programs much easier to find. It would be really nice if Amazon would stop giving me junk I don't want.

Amazon is full of interference like, "Customers who bought this item also bought" and "Product Information from the Amapedia Community." I don't live in a silo! I know Mr. Bezos thinks Bayesian algorithms are genius encoded, but they're just useless clutter that get in my way of making purchases.

At the same time, have you seen what a pain it is to find your wish lists?
http://www.junkiwant.com/wishlistid.aspx

If I have 150 items in 7 wish lists, why does Amazon think it's brilliant to send me an item or two "that other people bought" when I finally decide to wade through the mess and make a purchase?

Amazon has nice prices and I like the $25 order, free shipping offer. That makes me a customer.

Amazon is really holding me back when it comes to being my own store. I would find Amazon far more useful if it would build its user experience around two kinds of lists: things for me to buy (or people to buy for me), and things for me to sell.

I would like Amazon to give me an easy way to put items into a variety of categories (somewhat there now with wish lists) so that I could make those lists EASILY available to OTHER people as either items I'd recommend (associate program) or want (wish lists). As it is now, it's impossible to find a SIMPLE URL for my wish lists (as demonstrated in the URL above). There are no RSS feeds. Thus, my wish lists are useful for me to make purchases and no one else.

As for the associate program, instead of having a link on every product page telling me "what others bought" (which is so annoying) how about a link on every product page making it possible for me to refer people to your product through my associate ID? That could be a link for an external referral, or a way to add it to a list on a page of "Products Recommended by Tim." That would actually give meaning to "Tim's Amazon.com"

Make it so I can easily show these people where those pages are.

And then give people the option of buying the product for me (a la Wish List) or buying it for themselves and tying that to the associate program.

Is this making any sense? Are you seeing the need? the market demand that's waiting?

Tim
10,952 days