Remember Magic Shelf? When Borders introduced this feature last month, we
asked ourselves if browsing through a virtual bookshelf could have any advantage over using Amazon's category and ranking system. If you happen to be among those who prefer the virtual brick-and-mortar feeling, without giving up on Amazon, you can now try
Zoomii, launched earlier this week. ReadWriteWeb
writes:
Quote:
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Built on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3), interacting with Zoomii is reminiscent of Google Maps. You can zoom in and out of bookshelves or pan around to navigate the service. The site design feels just like you're browsing a bookshelf at any bookstore except the books are facing cover-forward instead of spine-out. To keep up with the feel of a bookstore, books are organized by author and you can also compare book sizes to get a feel for how big or small a book is.
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Official launch report:
link
Warning: Firefox 3 users should be aware of some kind of bug in Zoomi slowing your browsing experience down to a crawl. The developers are currently working on a fix.
Related: Amazon and Borders - a match made in heaven?