I had a note from Paul Chandler to let me know about SMSprice.co.uk. It’s a really straight forward, simple service that solves a direct problem for anyone interested in querying Amazon prior to buying a book. [Remember I did a piece on Mobsaver.com / Frucall a while back? SMSprice.co.uk is similar, but serving a UK audience.]
Witness Mr C, quoted on the SMSprice.co.uk site:
"Fanastic, I was about to buy a £41 Java book in a High Street shop,
while I was still in the shop I found it £12 cheaper at Amazon, Thanks"
Mr. C, Bucks.
It’s a really, really valuable facility. All you have to do is quickly register — then, when you’re out and about wanting to do a price query, simply text the ISBN number to the SMSprice.co.uk number. (It’s a long MSISDN number, so texts used come out of your monthly bundles). Quick as a flash, you get a response back.
If you’d like to give it a go, check out the online form here. Just bang in the ISBN of a book sitting on your desk and give it a go. Seriously, if you’ve got a few mins, try it out! Support our mobile developers!
You get back the following in the text message reply from your query:
- Online price
- Online availability
- Average customer rating
- Number of reviews the rating’s based on
Cool! I did it with Tom’s Mobile Strategies book:
Very cool. Interesting that it’s cheaper new than it is used, eh? 🙂
Ciao
couple years ago I co-develoepd a Flash Lite application called iShop that did exactly that.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/flashlite_winners.html
Alessandro
I love it – that will be so useful, as I often browse bookshops and wonder how much it would be in Amazon.
Brilliant tool – other online stores should do the same.