Tag Archives: iPhone

Mechanical Turking for Amazon’s iPhone app

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