Saturday, October 25th, 2003

Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book”

I initially thought that Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book” was going to be full-text searchable. Well, not exactly. You can search for words but the results are displayed as images of the page the text is on. This is mainly for copyright reasons and I guess it makes sense. If they were making a research tool actual text would be good but they’re not really doing that.

I think what Amazon is trying to do is recreate the library browsing experience where you search for a subject in the library catalog and then head to the stacks to flip through books and see if they’re what you really want. This makes finding random interesting books on Amazon a lot more likely. I think it will definately make me buy more books from Amazon, like I don’t buy enough already.

Wired has more on this new feature of Amazon.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2003 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Information Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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4 Responses to “Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book””

1. infozo Says:
   October 27th, 2003 at 4:41 pm

   this is a terribly awkward place to put this, but… Dan has been in a car accident and is looking at several weeks in the hospital. Whatsay we flood his inbox with good wishes?

2. Greg Says:
   October 28th, 2003 at 11:16 pm

   Hey Dan,

   Stay strong, buddy. We all look forward to your triumphant return to the blogosphere.

3. Jessica Says:
   October 29th, 2003 at 10:50 pm

   Oh my gosh! Get well soon!

4. infozo Says:
   December 11th, 2003 at 10:48 pm

   Dan’s back, everybody! Tonight a message he wrote to the school listserv went out and about… he’s planning on being back in school (working on the Ph[u]D) in the Fall!

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