Mobile Amazon.com CD lookup
Often times when I’m at a store looking at CDs I’ll find one by a group that I’ve heard good things about (maybe a friend told me to check out their latest release). I have a good memory, but not for things like CD titles. Instead of being high-tech and just use something like the iTunes Music Store, I went overkill and wrote myself a tool to use on my phone that pings Amazon for some info about a CD via its UPC.
Let me explain.
I go to a little XHTML page and type in a CD’s UPC code, which isn’t that bad since phones are optimized for numeric input anyway. I hit go and in a second or two comes back info like the title and artist (for verification that everything is correct) and then the all important release date and price. If I see the release date was last month and the price is the same as the store I’m in, I found a steal and will snag it. If Amazon has it for a bunch cheaper, or if it wasn’t the release I was thinking of, I can pass. Oh and it also passes the average review score, so I know if I have good taste.
I haven’t used this in the wild yet, since I just wrote it tonight, but you can take a peek. Remember that it’s made to be used on a mobile phone, so there are no graphics. It runs super fast even over GPRS. But you’re welcome to try it out in any web browser.
I’m thinking about making it a little more handy, and perhaps adding a few other similar functions (maybe for books and DVDs). Obviously books have their release date built in, but price and rating info would be fun.