Today , I walk down the street to my local autonomous bookshop , spied a title I ’d been meaning to buy in the windowpane , whipped out my phone , scanned the cover , and within seconds , I ’d place an order . I salvage $ 7 . It ’ll be on my desk by Friday . It was wanton , it was unseamed , it was n’t a fairish fight . That ’s Amazon Flow .
Amazon ’s iOS app is get an fast-growing service that might turn you into the kind of jerk that shop at for grocery and rule book on your earphone , even if you ’ve resist such futurist indolence forever .
The Amazon app is already a breeze to use : It ’s the upright and fastest way to buy something when you ’re nowhere near a computer , which is inevitably when you recollect that you really call for to grease one’s palms something . How did we ever get by without ordering some thumbtacks , pens , and diapers all while sloshed at the bar . Amazon ’s app has always been outstanding at that .
But with the new “ Flow ” tool on Amazon ’s iOS app , you ’ll be looking up items by simply pointing your phone at them . The app has had visual hunting since since 2009 , but this raw version is way slicker than the survive “ Scan it ” and “ Snap it ” search feature that already exit . Until now , you could skim the barcode of an particular you ’d care to buy or snap a picture of it and seek it against Amazon ’s image database — provided it ’s a Quran , DVD , CD , or video plot . glance over it works very well , but Snap it is kind of a pain in the butt because you do n’t sleep together if your image is going to work until you ’ve really queried Amazon . I ’ve tried in vain to use Snap it for keep track of books I want to buy and it ’s always easier to just scan the barcode .
The fresh Flow search is a entire overhaul of the existing Snap it putz , and it works so well that I just need to scan everything I see in my life and add it to a list of things I might potentially purchase in the future . When you swap it on , Flow turns your iPhone ’s camera into one of those scanners you ’re used to seeing in the tick out aisle of Target except that or else of sticking to barcodes it read the literal - existence for objects that might seem standardised to intersection in Amazon ’s database . It works like conjuration , basically instantly register not just books and DVD , but also pita chips , laundry detergent , Triscuits , and other consumable home items in about a second . It ’s always on , so you’re able to just take the air down an aisle in a stock scan items .
harmonize to Amazon ’s VP of snitch Sam Hall , the end is to make everything Amazon sells searchable in this way , but for right now , Flow works comfortably with thing that are in publicity . ( In my experience , it only works with things in packaging , and it works best with items that have bold , great typography . ) Hall would n’t reveal much about the implicit in proprietary image recognition technical school , but it ’s nothing especially new . If you make out what the template image of an item looks like , it ’s very prosperous to expend a television camera to recognize other exchangeable image . It ’s how camera retrieve the faces to center on , how Facebook recognizes your friends , and how bots seek to break up CAPTCHAs .
Indeed , IBM indicate a engineering suspiciously similar to Amazon Flow ’s a year ago . IBM ’s demonstration is a pretty traditional augmented realness experience that accredit the humanity around you and gives you more information , in this compositor’s case , discover items on a supermarket ledge and serving up victuals facts .
According to Amazon ’s Sam Hall , though , the intent of Flow is n’t so much to change people ’s retail experiences in storage as to render to make it easy to fill again items that you ’re always buying . So that when you ’re out of soup-strainer or garbage bags or toilet newspaper publisher it ’s easy to read it in the cognitive operation of doing everything else . You recognize , more for buy new deodorant from the sleeping accommodation than turning local stores into nothing but unofficial Amazon showrooms . But there ’s no dubiousness you ’ll require to use it for both .
To turn back to my original experience in the bookstore , though , I ’m surprised that neither Amazon nor IBM are playing up the steal hunting potency of augment reality shopping , Why would I buy a book in person for $ 18 when I can have it on my desk tomorrow for $ 11 ? I already price compare using my phone and Flow makes it easier . Amazon could be very quickly become a Costco substitute : When I scanned the Raisin Bran box that the companionship station me to prove out the new tool , Amazon correctly identified the 18.2 ounce parcel , but it quoted me a price of $ 8.94 — for three box . That ’s way adept than I ’m going to do at any food market in New York .
On this last note , I ’d be derelict to not advert that this is only going to hurt local businesses . Amazon is a mammoth company that ’s often accuse of pigeonhole out Mom and Pop shops , and the society ’s reps were careful to dance around the technology ’s implications for local businesses like the bookstores we know and make out on our luncheon breaks but never buy anything from . But Amazon is in the business of selling you things , not keeping small company unfastened . If you find that distasteful — and many do!—the good affair you may do in reply is to keep buying local .
The most likely scenario is a combination between bargain hunting and pure gadget uses for the applied science . Am I gon na scan and price comparison ? You wager . But I ’m also belike going to buy newfangled razor blades when I realize I ’m out . And just when I thought I could n’t practice Amazon for more hooey . [ iTunes ]
Video by Nick Stango
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