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By Paul Bausch
August 2003
Pages: 302
Series: Hacks
ISBN 10: 0-596-00542-3 |
ISBN 13: 9780596005429
(Average of 2 Customer Reviews)
Get 5 FREE Bonus Hacks with purchase of this book!
Amazon Hacks is a collection of real-world tips, tricks, and full-scale solutions to practical uses of Amazon.com and the Amazon Web Services API . The book offers a variety of interesting ways for power users to get the most out of Amazon and its community, for Associates to hone their recommendations for better linking and more referral fees, for researchers to mine the enormous amount of information in Amazon's data store, and for developers to integrate Amazon Web Services into their applications and services.
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Cover | Table of Contents | Index | Sample Hacks | Colophon
Book details
First Edition: August 2003
Series:
Hacks
ISBN: 0-596-00542-3
Pages: 302
Average Customer Reviews: (Based on 2 Reviews)
Featured customer reviews
Amazon Hacks Review, February 03 2004
Amazon Hacks Review, September 19 2003
Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
By Dale Farris, Secretary
Golden Triangle PC Club
September 2003
Mention the word "Amazon" today and most people will not necessarily think of the largest river in the world, especially the very young. The common perception of Amazon.com is that it is a web-based bookstore, but like its namesake river, Amazon.com is much more than merely a place to buy books.
Today, Amazon.com is really a complex web application. Instead of just a place to buy various items, Amazon.com is a tool you can customize and adapt to your own uses. This includes participating in the Amazon community, earning money through Amazon's Marketplace and Associates Programs, as well as improving the way you interact with the site.
This latest addition to O'Reilly's very successful Hacks series shows readers of every level how to tap into the power that Amazon offers. Through these industrial-strength tips and tools, readers will learn how to get the most out of Amazon.com.
Over Amazon's lifetime, the company has invested $900 million in technology. Though Amazon.com is more often thought of as an online "shop," today the company is really a highly advanced technology company. More and more, Amazon.com is in the business of providing technology to other businesses, as well as their customers. For example, 30% of Amazon's business is from third-party sales. This means other businesses, and sometimes even competitors are making money through Amazon.com.
In this super new "Hacks" title, we have a call to all true hackers out there to innovate on the platform. By lowering barriers to entry and experimentation on top of the Amazon platform, true hackers are invited to extend and enhance the platform for all to enjoy.
There are tools and tips here that will appeal to a wide variety of audiences, including online shoppers, web site owners, sellers of products, and software developers. Readers are also encouraged to remember that some of the hacks in the book will continue to evolve. You can always find the current ingredients for any serious software development, the Amazon.com API, at www.amazon.com/webservices.
When Amazon.com first opened its virtual doors on July 16, 1995, it was one of several online booksellers. As Amazon embraced the technology to categorize and display millions of books in one space, people embraced the ability to search for and purchase books in a new way. The experience of building a successful business based on an open system like the Web has influenced Amazon throughout its history.
Amazon has consistently pushed the technology envelope in their quest to provide a satisfying, personalized experience for their customers. What started as a human-edited list of product recommendations has morphed into a sophisticated computer-generated recommendation engine that tailors product choices for tens of millions of individuals by analyzing their purchase history and the patterns of other Amazon customers. As the Web evolved into a two-way space for discussion and community, Amazon developed features that let anyone post information and advice about products.
With this intriguing history, it should not have been a surprise when on July 16, 2002 Amazon released a free Web Services interface that gave developers programmatic access to Amazon's vast collection of product and customer data. With this interface, Amazon combined their core features of recommendations, affiliate marketing, and marketplace commerce into a single technology platform that can be used to build applications and businesses.
"Amazon Hacks" is not intended to be merely an exhaustive explanation of Amazon's features. Instead it's intended to highlight some lesser-known features, show some tricks for working with Amazon efficiently, and document ways to access Amazon programmatically. Developers are already creating new features for Amazon through the Amazon API, and it is this book's intent to convey some of their creativity and excitement, inspiring the hacker in you.
Summary of Table of Contents
The 100 Amazon hacks are organized into 6 chapters, including the following:
1 - Browsing and Searching
2 - Controlling Your Information
3 - Participating in the Amazon Community
4 - Selling Through Amazon
5 - Associates Program
6 - Amazon Web Services
Key Topics Covered
This book will show you how to do the following:
Find just the product you are after among the millions available at Amazon
Access, control, and fine-tune your Amazon preferences, recommendations, and information
Participate in the growing Amazon community and integrate Amazon features into your own Web site
Become and Amazon Associate, develop your own online storefront, and hone your recommendations for better linking and higher referral fees
Sell products online using Amazon's billing, inventory, and marketing infrastructure
Build full-scale desktop and server applications on Amazon's Web Services API
Book Contents
304 pages; foreword by the Amazon technology team; preface; figures; tips; sample scripts; index; cover colophon
Author
Paul Bausch
About the Author
Paul Bausch is an accomplished Web Application Developer, and is a co-creator of the popular weblog software Blogger (www.blogger.com). He co-wrote "We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs" (John Wiley & Sons), and posts thoughts and photos almost daily to his personal weblog onfocus (www.onfocus.com).
ISBN
August 2003 First Edition
0-596-00542-3
List Price
$24.95
$38.95 CAN
Publisher
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
101 Morris Street
Sebastopol, California 95472
1-800-998-9938
1-707-820-0515
FAX 1-707-829-0104
www.oreilly.com
Media reviews
"If you work in e-tailing, you've just found your missing manual. A definite must-read for anyone committed to conducting more productive, more user-centric Web commerce. We give it two thumbs up!"
--Seattle 24x7, July 2004
http://www.seattle24x7.com/brewing/brewing091503.htm
"There is much, much more to Amazon than selling merchandise, and this title provides a remarkable insight into its many facets, as well as showing how tot take advantage of them...The focus is on Amazon, but the principles (and many of the hacks) have a wider relevance."
--Major Keary, PC Update, May 2004
"Anyone who likes Amazon and wants to enrich their experience should purchase and read this book. Not only will you learn more about the super seller Amazon, but you'll enjoy your experience."
--Patrick Grote, Dot Journal, February 2004
http://www.dotjournal.com/book_reviews/amazonhacks0204.html
"If you're an Amazon veteran, the book contains some information you probably already know, but also a lot of things you probably don't know. For example, did you know that many charities have wish lists of items they require that can be purchased and donated through the website? Or did you know that there's a way to rank items on your own wish list so that when gift occasions roll around all you have to do is refer friends or relatives to that webpage on the site? If you have visited the Amazon site and found yourself lost in the labyrinth of products and information, Amazon Hacks can help you sort through the confusion."
--Marc Duane Anderson, TheCelebrityCafe.com, January 2004
http://www.thecelebritycafe.com/books/full_review/172.html
"If you use Amazon.com, you can learn some useful tricks without doing any coding. However, if you want to make money, you'll really benefit from putting Paul Bausch's suggestions into practice."
--Jacquelyn Sykes, Alamo PC, January 2004
"Call it capitalist communitarianism: Some of the Net's biggest businesses have found a way to tap the open source model without giving away the store. The secret is a software protocol called an application program interface. An API is a published set of programming hooks that lets you interact directly with a company's open servers. In other words, you can mine company databases for free. A new series by tech publisher O'Reilly explains how to use APIs to extract information from Amazon, eBay, and Google. The best part: There's no need to consult your Perl manual - these books offer dozens of handy scripts to automate tasks such as searching archives, product listings, and auctions in progress. Exploiting APIs is not only legal, it's encouraged."
--Paul Boutin, Wired Magazine, December 2003
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/play_pr.html
"I was excited when I first learned that O'Reilly would be adding an Amazon book to its Hacks series. Being the geek I am, I had wanted to dabble with Amazon's new XML Web Service API, and 'Amazon Hacks' looked to be a handy guide for doing just that. But the book turned out to be much more that just a developer's guide to the Web Service API, as it covers many aspects of the entire range of Amazon's services. As a whole it provides what could well be called the 'Power User's Guide to Amazon.com'"
--Dan Hanks, Provo Linux Users Group, December 2003
http://brainshed.com/reviews/ora_amazon_hacks.html
"O'Reilly's Hacks series is becoming an institution; the concept is innovative and each title stands as a really useful resource and reference...There is much, much more to Amazon than selling merchandise, and this title provides a remarkable insight into its many facets, as well as how to take advantage of them...Anyone interested in developing scripting skills, especially for web applications, will find this a useful tutorial. If you happen to have an interest in practical aspects of web marketing 'Amazon Hacks' is well worth studying."
--Major Keary, "Book News," December 2003
"I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I was expecting a re-hash of everything I already know about Amazon.com. What I ended up getting was a well-written, intriguing look at the guts of one of the world’s most popular booksellers."
--Salt Lake City ColdFusion User Group, November 2003
http://www.slcfug.org/index.cfm?pageID=57
"O'Reilly are publishing a great series of 'Hacks' books faster than I can read them and put the tips into use. Even worse, each book has been full of great ideas I want to use, so I keep spending far too much time trying out the tricks I'm learning, but it's paying off. Within the first 12 pages of Amazon Hacks, I'd found two tricks I could put to use immediately to make my work easier...In conclusion -- if you use Amazon, whether as a buyer or as a seller, you'll likely find lots of useful tips in this book, far more than enough to justify the (low) cost."
--Jean Weber, jeanweber.com, November 2003
http://www.jeanweber.com/books/amazonhacks.htm
"I picked up this tip [tracking the Amazon sales ranking of a book or product over time] from the fabulous book 'Amazon Hacks,' which I feel any serious user of Amazon should read."
--Kevin Kelly, Cool Tools, October 2003
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000172.php
"O'Reilly & Associates Inc., the world's foremost publishing house for gearheads, offers 'Amazon Hacks' ($24.95), a fascinating look at the innards of the ultrapopular Web shopping site. It will tell you far more than you ever wanted to know about using Amazon's catalogs, personalized shopping lists, product ratings, and other features."
--James Coates, "Chicago Tribune," August 2003
"Having posted over 200 reviews on Amazon over the past three years, I thought I was reasonably familiar with what Amazon had to offer on its site. While I was familiar with wish lists, posting reviews and the like, this book proved me wrong, as I learned about numerous other features (especially movie show times!) that Amazon offers...'Amazon Hacks' shows how by using some 'tricks,' you can make your own use of Amazon and its numerous services that much more enjoyable and useful. This book is a wonderful 'guide' to some interesting 'hacks' that can be used while browsing the Amazon.com site. 5 stars."
--Todd Hawley, Amazon.com Customer Reviews, August 2003
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596005423/
