So a few days ago I saw a link to the HITs for the photo based product search in Amazon’s new iPhone app. And decided it might be fun to do some. And amazon was paying 10¢ a pop, so I thought it might be worth seeing how easy it was. I quickly started seeing patterns on what people were using to app to find many of them were obviously taken at the office and at their desk because trends appeared quickly.
Below is a list of some of the things I saw come up often and some notes about them.
For the watches, I was only able to find an exact match once. And for the coffee cups, never. I found every book someone took a photo of though. Only two photos appeared to come from inside a store.
| Item | # | Notes |
| Phones | 12 | Three of them were Blackberries three were iPhones or iPhone boxes and 3 office phones |
| Watches | 10 | I was only able to identify one of them |
| Figurine / Toy | 9 | Was able to identify about three of them exactly |
| Mugs, Cups or Glasses | 8 | Not able to match any |
| Computers | 8 | Four were Mac Four were PC. All but one were laptops, the other was an old G4 |
| Books | 7 | Was able to find them all |
| Appliances | 6 | |
| Headphones | 6 | |
| Candy | 5 | |
| Water | 4 | |
| Hard Drive | 4 | One WD, Two Lacie One Maxtor |
| Widget | 4 | Adapters, connectors, etc. was only able to find one audio connector |
| Household Supplies | 3 | Lysol, Cleaners, etc |
| Lotion or Soap | 3 | |
| Monitors | 3 | |
| Mouse | 3 | One Apple, Two Microsoft |
| Printer | 3 | |
| Router/Switch | 3 | Two routers and one switch |
| Shoes | 3 | |
| Coke | 2 | Regular and Coke Zero |
| Keyboard | 2 | HP and Logitec |
| Lamp | 2 | |
| Other drinks | 2 | I think they were wine |
| Posters | 2 | Was not able to match either |
| Powertools | 2 | matched both |
| Speakers | 2 | Matched One |
| Sunglasses | 2 | No matches |
| Supliments | 2 | |
| TV | 2 | Both HDTV |
| Video Game Accesories | 2 | Controller and Memory Card |
| Water Bottles | 2 | Found both |
| Bluetooth Headsets | 1 | |
| Calculator | 1 | |
| CDs | 1 | Portishead – Third |
| Chairs | 1 | |
| Clocks | 1 | |
| Clothing | 1 | Winter hat |
| Decoration | 1 | |
| DVDs | 1 | It was the closeup of the back of one. |
| Fan | 1 | |
| Food | 1 | Bananas (Amazon only had things made from bananas) |
| Jewelry | 1 | A blurry ring |
| Kleenex | 1 | |
| Magnets | 1 | |
| Mailbox | 1 | A blue Mailbox! It would be illegal for Amazon to sell one! |
| Memory Card Reader | 1 | |
| Micrometer | 1 | Digital |
| Person | 1 | It was actually their tie, you could not see their face |
| Playing Cards | 1 | |
| Scooter | 1 | |
| Sculptures | 1 | |
| Software | 1 | A Garageband Jam Pack |
| Stocking | 1 | |
| Sun | 1 | |
| Video Cameras | 1 | |
| Video Games | 1 | Guitar Hero On Tour |
| Walkie Talkies | 1 | |
| iPod Touch Screenshots | 1 |
Did you notice that Amazon was also doing a first pass on the photos for $.01/each, asking turkers to simply answer whether the product *might* be sold on Amazon, with a yes/no answer? I’m assuming they used these very quick HITs to weed out the garbage before creating the $.10 hits in the second pass.
Oh I did not see that. That would explain why I never got photos of people, or obviously not findable things (except for that mailbox heh)