Amazon.com Feeds Impulse Shopping Frenzy with iPhone App

— -- Just in time for the busy holiday shopping season, Amazon.com has released an iPhone App that gives users a direct portal to the Website without the Safari middleman. After you sign into your account, the Amazon App lets you search, buy items with a single click, access your wish list and account information, and basically do everything the regular website offers.

The one unique difference is Amazon Remembers, an "experimental" feature. Amazon Remembers uses the iPhone's camera to snap photographs of products you're interested in buying. Amazon then sends those pictures to the diligent team of Mechanical Turks, which analyzes them and sends you product suggestions based on what they deem the picture to be. So if you wanted a Nintendo Wii, hypothetically you could snap a picture of the box, send it to Amazon, and the site would offer options to buy the item through it rather than the retailer you're standing in.

The app is a fantastic resource for last-minute and impulse shopping on the go. I did, however, experience a problem with the Amazon Remembers program. I took a picture of a Blackberry phone. I think the picture is pretty clear. Ten minutes later, Amazon told me it couldn't match similar products. I don't blame the company for the kinks, though: the app, after all, was just released today.