As if online shopping isn’t addictive enough what with eBay offering mobile bidding, Amazon has rolled out a new service that allows you to buy things via the ever flexible and versatile medium of texting called, TextBuyIt.
All you have to do is text the name of the product you want, its description or its UPC or ISBN to ‘262966′ (which spells Amazon on the keypad). If the item you are looking for is recognized, two results are returned which you can choose between by pressing ‘1′ or ‘2′. If neither option is right you can ask for more by texting the letter ‘M’.
Once you settle on an item, all you have to do is enter the e-mail address associated with your Amazon account and your zip code (looks like this service is US only the moment). You then receive a call that walks you through the checkout process via an automated voice system.
We reckon most customers will find browsing items two at a time a bit frustrating, but if you are looking for something super specific, like Halo 3 or Lord Of The Rings, it could come in very handy. There’s no word on whether this is coming to European shores yet, so feel free to breath a pre-emptive sigh of relief for your bank balance.
(Via textually)
Something I’ve been wondering ever since Apple announced its iPhone SDK was whether it’ll allow rival music stores like Amazon and eMusic to launch apps for the iPhone to sell their music. In an ideal world, Apple would welcome the competition and be confident that iTunes will be able to take them on, but something tells me it might take the alternative approach and ban them.
However, some people are working on the idea in a distinctly unofficial style. Someone’s created a native iPhone app called iPhone Music Center, which lets you browse songs from Amazon’s US-based MP3 store on your iPhone, then buy and download them. Amazon sells DRM-free MP3s, so in theory they play on the iPhone without any problems.
This is an issue to watch, since it would make sense for rival stores to try and compete with iTunes on the iPhone itself, but Apple’s policy remains to be seen.
iPhone Music Center website (via iPhone World)
How cool is this? Most manufacturers would claim their Bluetooth headsets are ‘fashionable’ and will make you stand out from the crowd. But none would do so as much as Jabra’s latest.
The only word to describe the Jabra BT3030 is “cool”. The dog tag design is definitely a little different from the norm and looks much better than your normal headsets.
Better yet, it’s Stereo Bluetooth (Bluetooth 2.0), has a changeable/universal connection for headphones, a personalised equalizer and six buttons for controlling your phone’s media play and making calls. It’s also got a blue backlight and Jabra also reckons it offers 200 hours of standby time.
Fancy one for Christmas? Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that it’s also dead cheap – under £35 at Amazon. Bargain.
Zumobi is a new mobile browsing app that offers an unusual interface and uses cached data to speed up online usage and give the option of offline browsing as well.
Rather than a traditional browser, Zumobi offers a set of sixteen ‘Tiles’, each containing a link to some specially-formatted web content. The user can ‘zoom in’ on a set of four tiles, then zoom further to bring up the relevant page.
There is a Flash demo here that should give a flavour of what that it looks like in practice.
Zumobi’s servers cache the data for your preselected tiles and the mobile app caches it onto your phone so you should be able to keep up to date even if you are in a blackspot or on board a plane.
It all sounds like good fun, but any walled-garden approach to the web lives or dies on its range of content and although Zumobi claim partnerships with big players like Flickr and Amazon, the ability to add your own content could prove crucial to this service taking off.
Targeted advertising is also presented as a feature and while it is admittedly better than spam it’s hard to picture many people walking around thinking “Ooh, do you know what? I could just go for some targeted advertising right about now.”
The beta version launches on the 14th of December and you can sign up here.
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