Search or Browse Amazon with Watson

You can use Watson’s interface to find items at Amazon or integrate Amazon’s data into other Mac applications.

An alternative way to access Amazon.com if you’re a Mac user is to use Watson, from Karelia Software. Watson is a “Swiss army knife” of over 20 tools that access the most useful web services. Along with movie and TV listings, package tracking, telephone lookup, weather forecasts, online recipes, searching, translation, and more, Watson also features a tool for browsing and searching Amazon.com through their API.

Watson’s Amazon.com tool is divided into four sections, organized vertically (see Figure 6-12). At the top of the window (below the optional toolbar for easy access to other tools) is the search field. The user selects which “store” to search within, or a particular aspect of the selected store (such as searching by ASIN or UPC number, actor or director, etc.), enters a search term, and clicks the Find button.

Amazon and Watson integration

Figure 6-12. Amazon and Watson integration

The second section is the browser, which allows the user to browse the store hierarchically. The main stores appear in the leftmost column, and as the user selects an item, the columns to the right populate with lists of subcategories.

The third section is the result list, displaying either the search results or the featured items for a selected category. Only 10 items are loaded at ...

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