Whedonesque : Comments on 16704 : Hands on: Zoomii breathes life into Amazon's bookshelves.

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June 26 2008

Hands on: Zoomii breathes life into Amazon's bookshelves. This might be stretching what constitutes a Whedon reference, but it's also really cool on its own: Ars Technica reviews zoomii.com, a "real" online bookstore with browsable "shelves" of books. The choice of book for the detailed view screenshot is what made me post this.

thiscloud | Firefly&Serenity | 03:20 CET | 8 comments total | tags: serenity, firefly

Oh thank goodness. I thought I was going to have to zoom in to hundreds of books to see which one had caught your eye. But it was much easier than that.

Lioness | June 26, 07:24 CET

Erm...so basically you just search for a book and when you find it and want to buy it you click on a link that takes you to the product's amazon page?

That's kinda pointless.

shesmyeverything | June 26, 19:11 CET

The point is actually that you browse ad covers can catch your eye like in an actual bookstore. I don't find it pointless.

zeitgeist | June 26, 19:14 CET

Me neither. I love browsing bookshelves and hate it when you can't see the cover; and Amazon has such a limited browsing capability.

It would be cool if as you narrow down the genre the selection within that genre expands, but I don't think thats what happens based on this write-up. Still it's possibly download-worthy, I've found that each brick-and-mortar chain has some authors that the another chains don't stock. As if I need an excuse to buy more books.

cabri | June 26, 22:39 CET

Hmm I guess we have a different selection process. I usually have an idea of what I want to read so don't have to look at the covers, though saying that I once brought a book just because i LIKED its cover.

shesmyeverything | June 26, 22:57 CET

I only limit myself by which section I go to. Some of my favorite books were casual pickups because I liked the cover, but I assure you I don't buy a book just because it has a great cover. ;)

cabri | June 26, 23:28 CET

I think it's nice. I passed the eyes through the "shelves" and saw a book with "Brazil" in the title. Then read the sinopsys and that was a terrible thing!
In the end, the search button was better.

Brasilian Chaos Man | June 26, 23:42 CET

I usually have an idea when I go shopping for books, but how many times have you gotten to a bokostore and gone "Oh, I totally forgot that this was comiing out!!!" and scooped it up? Harder to do when you aren't browsing through covers and such (not impossible, and there are ways for online stores to remind you certainly). I dig it.

zeitgeist | June 26, 23:45 CET

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