UPDATE: Amazon's online tracking put the book I ordered in Cologne, Germany less than a day after I ordered it online. The challenge will be whether UPS can punt the box out of Germany during the night. It did--and the book arrived ahead of the Amazon timeline.
AMAZON -- With severe winter weather cramping the transportation system on the American eastern seaboard, I figured it was time to check Amazon in the snow. So I ordered a book I really fast (Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought) and paid twice its cover price in shipping because the online sales mechanism said the book would arrive by Thursday. I want Amazon (and UPS) to pass the snow test.
At the point of ordering the book, Amazon told me what other titles I should also buy. The Amazon recommendation were absurdly correct--they were the titles on the supplemental reading list for the visual arts lecture that mandated the first title. Bezos told Chris Anderson how that happens:
We not only help readers find books, we also help books find readers, with personalized recommendations based on the patterns we see. I remember one of the first times this struck me. The main book on the pages was on zen . There were other suggestions for Zen books, and in the middle of those was a book on how to have a clutter-free desk. That's not something that a human editor would have ever picked. But statistically, the people who were interested in the Zen books also wanted clutter-free desks. The computer is blind to the fact that these things are dissimilar in some way that's important to humans. It looks right through that and says yes, try this. And it works.
I like Amazon because Jeff Bezos makes it easy to send me presents. Just click into my Amazon Wishlist and flex your credit card--online giving made into a one-click experience. Amazon made it one-click easy to donate to Tsunami relief. Amazon gave me $1 off my latest purchase just prior to ordering because I use A9 when searching.
