Amazon's new Look Inside feature

October 10, 2001 10:35 AM

Amazon's new Look Inside feature allows you to see images of selected pages and excerpts from books. Now if only they could get that latte to flow through the cat-5...
posted by dchase (11 comments total)

Even though they were spanked in court back in February, I still observe the Amazon Boycott. Pity, cuz I buy a helluva lot of books online. I generally patronize the vendors listed at: noamazon.com.
posted by RavinDave at 10:58 AM on October 10, 2001

It's brilliant and truly useful.

Now if only they could tweak their bloody annoying and way off-target "recommended/just for you" feature.
Today, in "Miguel's Store"(God is that condescending or what? I don't even know them!)I got Tiger Woods and a 15-year old Welsh opera singer.

I'll share their cool, pedophiliac-like prose with you. Because you too are loved:
Of course, we couldn't expect time to freeze its relentless path and forever preserve the Welsh sensation Charlotte Church in a chrysalis of precocious youth

...Well, you'd have to be American to come up with an appropriate response to that.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:07 AM on October 10, 2001

This is like the equivalent to the song snippets you hear on cd-now etc. Great, just like flicking through the pages in a book store, something everyone does. Especially good for visual books to see if you like the layout and style. Can't say it would be much use with Moby Dick, though as any booklover will tell you, the cover is important.
posted by Zootoon at 11:18 AM on October 10, 2001

Haven't they had Look Inside for a while?
posted by kirkaracha at 11:22 AM on October 10, 2001

What's neat is that the whole page doesn't redraw, which means you don't have to scroll down after every flip of the page. Very good, Amazon.
posted by fooljay at 11:43 AM on October 10, 2001

Say what you will but they're still the best thing around in ecommerce. History will tell whether it was smart or dumb of them to ride the bubble the way they did and whether their financing and accounting strategies work out.

For me, I still prefer going to St. Marks Bookshop or Coliseum (though not anymore since I moved to Madrid).
posted by mmarcos at 11:53 AM on October 10, 2001

The whole page does redraw actually, but then auto-anchors down to the page again.
posted by jessie at 11:58 AM on October 10, 2001

Ahhh, my super-speedy connection made it utterly transparent. Still a great job on that...
posted by fooljay at 12:25 PM on October 10, 2001

This is pretty clever and all, but kinda pointless (for me). You can't really make out the letters/read a sample chapter without straining your eyes to the max...
posted by Witold at 2:07 PM on October 10, 2001

I like it...and just about everything else Amazon.com has done. I suppose I'm in the minority, but I really think Bezos deserved his "Person of the Year" from Time magazine back in 1999.
posted by davidmsc at 2:59 PM on October 10, 2001

Looks remarkably like the "Chapter 1" feature in the now-dead Contentville.com website.
posted by gregwlsn at 1:12 PM on October 11, 2001