Andy (Waxy) had a lovely idea earlier this month - pick a favorite book/dvd/album and see what the worst is that the world has to say about it (Amazon.com User Reviews sorted from lowest-to-highest). He called it the Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian game. It's illuminating, fun and now a little easier to do - I pulled a few pieces of Amazon Light and some page-scraper bits I had laying around to make it a two-step process now. Go here, and enter a search term, and click on one of the search results, and voila: the worst of the lot.

For instance, here's some hating on Doolittle, by the Pixes. My favorite quote, from a 1-star rater "I dont like the pixies at all, but this is definatly their crowning acheivement." Wha?

Hours of time-wasting fun. That's what the Web is all about, no?

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Tomorrow (July 15th) is the Second Anniversary of Amazon Light. Two years ago, I made the site public, as part of a larger launch of proof-of-concept apps. The next day, Amazon announced their Webservices Platform. Over the course of the following week, traffic to the site grew exponentially, even attracting unwanted attention from Google's Legal department (I had to change the look - it was too Googly). For a while it was at the top of DayPop and Blogdex, but the part that always made me proudest was when people pointed to it as a concrete example, saying "that's what you can do with webservices".

I've never really shared the performance stats for Amazon Light before, in part because it's considered rude by some, in part because I discovered that a number of people were convinced I was making tens of thousands of dollars a month with this (I'm not) - why would I want to burst their bubble ;) From what I can tell, Amazon Light is a "high-average" site. Not in the same league as the top earners, but somewhere in the top 80% - but that's really educated guesswork. Also, at this stage, I'm more comfortable with sharing some numbers, so here you go.

Some basic stats on Amazon Light, based on numbers provided by Amazon (cumulative, over the past two years):

Total recorded click-thrus: 87,832
Total number of orders placed: 8,975
Total Revenue (for Amazon): $124,620.00

No - I did not earn $124,620.00 - that's what Amazon grossed based on my traffic (over the past 2 years). I earned a percentage of that, varying depending on item, in my case, averaging about 8%. And No, this does not take into account earnings made through Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, nor Amazon.co.jp. It is a very nice sum, which I whole-heartedly appreciate, but certainly not enough to retire on.

Most expensive item purchased (earlier this year): A Sharp LC-37HV4U 37" AQUOS LCD Flat-Panel HDTV-Ready TV at $4,199.94

Largest quantity order: 245 copies of Worth the Fighting for: A Memoir, the John McCain memoir, in late 2002.

Amazon Light (the site) is a little creaky (nonstandard, ugly HTML, un-scalable), and I've made a few new versions (v2, v3, uk, de, jp), but nothing performs like the original, not even close.

I have a few ideas for some further projects, and am tinkering with some new Amazon Webservices beta program projects, please drop a comment if you have any ideas/ suggestions/ critiques.

And lastly, a heartfelt thank-you to everyone who has ever used, linked to, or visited Amazon Light.

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Wondering if there was an RSS feed for the excellent Astronomy Picture of the Day, I googled, and found that jwz had created just such a feed a while back.

It also occurred to me that the latest images and press releases coming from Saturn (and Mars) would make excellent candidates for RSS feeds - the data is interesting and comes in unpredictable bursts. Well, NASA doesn't seem to have any (that I could find), so I threw together a few scrapers to get what I'm after. Feel free to use them as well, but be warned that they are based on pagescrapers - so they might go down at any moment.

For Saturn: Cassini-Huygens Probe - Latest Press Images Feed, the Planetary Photojournal, and the raw feed of Cassini Images (this last one could be wobbly due to aggressive caching on JPL's side).

For other Planets (and the Sun):

- Sun [last updated 3.13.2004]
- Mercury [last updated 1.18.2001]
- Venus [last updated 6.27.2003]
- Earth [last updated 7.7.2004]
- Mars [last updated 7.8.2004]
- Jupiter [last updated 11.13.2003]
- Uranus [last updated 8.24.2000]
- Neptune [last updated 4.01.2000]
- Pluto [last updated 3.28.1998]
or, just get 'em all with the All Planets (and Sun) feed [last updated 7.9.2004].

As for the Mars Rovers images, I'm still trying to figure out the best method to do generate an RSS feed for that - they don't have a good scrapable press-images page, and their raw image feeds are scattered and noisy - five cameras on two robots with sporadic updating. Seems like the Hubble telescope deserves an RSS feed too. Lemme know if there's any problems with these feeds or if there are other better ones out there.

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A person does many things in a day. These things are captured on film and transmitted via my favorite source of news photos, Yahoo News.

On any given day, a person:

Eats, drinks, bites, feeds, and (hopefully) cleans.

Speaks, addresses, shouts, yells, gestures, points, and, quite possibly listens.

Lifts, raises, flies, or clenches a fist, leaps, tackles, pushes, possibly shoves, throws, hurls, or tosses.

Frowns, cries, grimaces, weeps, or mourns (lots of this in the Middle East.)

Touches, scratches, and wipes. Holds, or clutches.

Sings, performs, and poses, or is captured in silhouette.

Smiles, consoles, laughs, celebrates, kisses, embraces, hugs, and dances.

Then of course, looks, yawns, and sleeps.

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- Amazon.com opens to the public in July 1995 -

- Amazon.com's Original Homepage from Aug 16 1995 -


The "New" logo from 1995 (no idea what the previous one looked like)


Variations on that logo through Early 1997:

[No Sub-Logo]


[Sub-logo, all lowercase]


[The Relief-Line look]


[All Caps, Initial Cap Larger]


[Animated - winner of best image name 'flamazon.gif']


- Amazon.com IPO: May 15, 1997 priced at $3.917 -

May 1997 HomepageFrom here (Microsoft article) - written by Michael Hyman, who - interestingly enough, went on to become a PM at Amazon.com


1997 Logo Update - lowercase serif font:

[White-on-black]

[larger name, black-on-white]


Early 1998From here


Briefly used 1998 Logo

Later-used 1998 Logo


- Music Store (and Tab) opens, June 1998 -

Late 1998 Logo and TabsFrom here


1999 Logo and TabsFrom here

2000 Logo:
The 2000 Logo briefly lived as an animated logo. In the original animation, the arrow grew from left to right (a-to-z, get it?), but came across visually as, erm... well it looked rather phallic - not exactly the effect they were after. Style 2 (below) grows from the center out, less phallic, but still only lived briefly.

Click on image below to see the animation if you missed it.


Lately: the 2002 Logo - "Amazon.com - And you're Done"


Other links:

- Amazon's own Five-year-anniversary page, from mid-2000.

- The Amazon Timeline 1995-2000 with a few of these logos above.

- Dack.com's Excellent 2001 parody: The Tab Cemetery

- Amazon.com Thumbnail from Wired, March 1999.


I'm sure there are other official variations out there. Drop a note in the comments if you know of one.

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Or, maybe that should be "Magnetbox Un-designs". Devoid of any images or navigational widgets, Magnetbox is redone. While I like the speed and simplicity, I can't help but think of dijon mustard (black flecks of text in creamy yellowish blobs). I will miss the Western theme, but times change, and drastic moves are great motivators.

Redesign fever lately - Me, Kottke (who also decried and eschewed the boxy-boxy trend), and now Ben. Blocks of text as design elements - how inescapable. (Unless you run a wordless blog)

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