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Amazon App for Blackberry

Amazon have launched a native app for the Blackberry.

 It's not available from the Blackberry app store yet but you can grab it from http://amazon.com/bb

 The app is very slick as you'd expect from an outfit which takes usability and selling VERY seriously indeed!

 As is typical with polished apps such as this, the interactive experience is much better than afforded by the web browser and using a mobile site. As an aside, how can these mobile sites get "better" in general? Surely a polished native app is a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Perhaps a lot of the problem here is the primitive Blackberry web browser.

 A hidden gem on this device is that you can take a photo of an object and, moments later, it will be identified by Amazon and you can buy it (if it's stocked by them). Very clever! Am assuming this is either wholly or partially possible because of Amazon's human driven and monetised Turk service.

 My wife validly asked "ooh! Does this mean I could take a photo of someone wearing a coat I like?" The answer is probably no but it's such a killer app that this feature should be a service in it's own right - take a photo of something, get amazon Turk to identify it and then give a list of where it can be bought from and the app can take a minimal commission on the sale. Job done :)

 Sadly the app is currently very US centric - if I try to buy something Amazon don't realise that I am a UK based customer (even though it's in my profile) and therefore all prices are in USD and shipping is from the US so no buying from my BB as of yet. In fairness I think this is an affliction which affects the websites as well - the sites are very much separate with very little cross over intelligence. Hopefully a UK centric app will be available soon as I could see myself using it a lot: especially with 1-click (tm) turned on :)