Amazon is releasing an iPhone App today according to the New York Times that will allow, amongst other less revolutionary functions, people to take pictures of something they want and have it come up as a purchase option. Obviously, if this works, it’d be a really interesting feature.
But it is, at the moment, slightly smoke and mirors.
The photos are then uploaded to Amazon and turned over to the far-flung freelance workers in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program, who will try to match them with products for sale on Amazon.com. The results will not be instantaneous (between 5 minutes and 24 hours, the company says), but the idea is to entice consumers to buy products from Amazon instead of its offline rivals.
Update: It is out.(iTunes link) You can start taking pictures of your privates and seeing how much Amazon charges for them!
Obviously, brick and morters aren’t going to be too pleased with iPhone users running around their stores snapping pictures and purchasing cheaper items online. Will iPhone usage be banned in stores?
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