[ Team LiB ] • Table of Contents • Index • Reviews • Reader Reviews • Errata Amazon Hacks By Paul Bausch Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: August 2003 ISBN: 0-596-00542-3 Pages: 304 Amazon Hacks is a collection of real-world tips, tricks, and full-scale solutions to practical uses of Amazon.com and the Amazon Web Services API . The book offers a variety of interesting ways for power users to get the most out of Amazon and its community, for Associates to hone their recommendations for better linking and more referral fees, for researchers to mine the enormous amount of information in Amazon's data store, and for developers to integrate Amazon Web Services into their applications and services. [ Team LiB ] [ Team LiB ] • Table of Contents • Index • Reviews • Reader Reviews • Errata Amazon Hacks By Paul Bausch Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: August 2003 ISBN: 0-596-00542-3 Pages: 304 Copyright Credits About the Author Contributors Acknowledgments Foreword Preface Why Amazon Hacks? How This Book Is Organized How to Use This Book Conventions Used in This Book How to Contact Us Got a Hack? Chapter 1. Browsing and Searching Section 1.1. Hacks #1-12 Section 1.2. Amazon Product Pages Hack 1. Find a Product's ASIN Hack 2. Find a CD's ASIN with the UPC Hack 3. Jump to a Product Using Its ASIN Hack 4. Create Shorter URLs Hack 5. Link Directly to Product Images Hack 6. Switch to a Text-Only Amazon Hack 7. Take Amazon Anywhere Hack 8. Browse and Search Categories with Browse Nodes Hack 9. Power-Search for Books Hack 10. Search Amazon from the IE Address Bar Hack 11. Search Amazon from Any Web Page in IE Hack 12. Add an Amazon Sidebar Search to Mozilla Chapter 2. Controlling Your Information Section 2.1. Hacks #13-26 Hack 13. Understand Identity at Amazon Hack 14. Fine-Tune Your Recommendations Hack 15. Enable 1-Click Buying Hack 16. Set Up a Group Account Hack 17. Create an "About You" Area Hack 18. Create a Wish List Hack 19. Add Items to a Wish List Remotely Hack 20. Add Multiple Items to a Wish List at Once Hack 21. Organize Your Wish List by Priority Hack 22. Set Email and Messages Preferences Hack 23. Get Movie Showtimes Hack 24. Create an Amazon Event Reminder Hack 25. Create Several Birthday Reminders at Once Hack 26. Best Practices for Your Amazon Account Chapter 3. Participating in the Amazon Community Section 3.1. Hacks #27-48 Section 3.2. Community Features Section 3.3. Accessing Community Features Hack 27. Write a Review Hack 28. Link Directly to Reviews of a Product Hack 29. Post a Review from a Remote Site Hack 30. Add Pop-up Amazon Reviews to Your Web Site Hack 31. Send an Email Alert if a Review Is Added to a Product Hack 32. Sort Books by Average Customer Rating Hack 33. Sort Your Recommendations by Average Customer Rating Hack 34. Scrape Product Reviews Hack 35. Publish Your Amazon Reviews on Your Site Hack 36. Share the Love (and Savings!) with Your Friends Hack 37. Create a Guide Hack 38. Post a Guide Remotely Hack 39. Add Product Advice Remotely Hack 40. Scrape Customer Advice Hack 41. Create a Listmania! List Hack 42. Gather Your Friends on Amazon Hack 43. Gather Your Friends' Amazon IDs Hack 44. Get Purchase Circle Products with Screen Scraping Hack 45. Find Purchase Circles by Zip Code Hack 46. Track the Ranks of Books Over Time Hack 47. Group Conversations About Books Hack 48. Add a "Currently Reading" List to Your Web Site Chapter 4. Selling Through Amazon Section 4.1. Hacks #49-58 Section 4.2. Understanding Amazon's Sales Programs Hack 49. Sell a Book with Amazon Marketplace Hack 50. Speed Up the Listing Process Hack 51. List Several Items for Sale at Once Hack 52. Sell What People Want Hack 53. Scope Out the Marketplace Competition Hack 54. List Your Items for Sale on Your Web Site Hack 55. Put an Item Up for Bid at Amazon Auctions Hack 56. Get (and Keep!) a Good Seller Rating Hack 57. Collect Donations from Your Web Site with the Honor System Hack 58. Show the Progress of Your Honor System Fund on Your Site Chapter 5. Associates Program Section 5.1. Hacks #59-75 Section 5.2. Make Money by Linking to Amazon Hack 59. Build Associate Links Hack 60. Sell Items from Your Site Hack 61. Sell Items with Pop-up Windows Hack 62. Create Banner Ads for Your Site Hack 63. Rotate Through Several Keyword Banners on Your Site Hack 64. Add an Amazon Search Box to Your Site Hack 65. Show Amazon Search Results on Your Site Hack 66. Create an Online Store Hack 67. Donate to Charities Through Associate Links Hack 68. Format a Review for Your Site Hack 69. Create Amazon Associate Links on Your Movable Type Weblog Hack 70. Simplify Amazon Associate Links in Your Blosxom Weblog Hack 71. Add an Amazon Box to Your Site Hack 72. Deep Linking to Amazon's Mobile Device Pages Hack 73. Measure Your Associate Sales Hack 74. Publish Your Associate Sales Statistics on Your Site Hack 75. Associates Program Best Practices Chapter 6. Amazon Web Services Section 6.1. Hacks #76-100 Section 6.2. What Are Web Services? Section 6.3. Why Expose an API? Section 6.4. What You Need Section 6.5. What You Can Do Section 6.6. Making Requests Section 6.7. The RESTful Way: XML/HTTP Section 6.8. SOAP Web Services Section 6.9. Working With Responses Hack 76. View XML Responses in a Browser Hack 77. Embed Product Details into a Web Page with PHP Hack 78. Program AWS with PHP Hack 79. Program AWS with Python Hack 80. Program AWS with Perl Hack 81. Loop Around the 10-Result Limit Hack 82. Program XML/HTTP with VBScript Hack 83. Transform AWS Results to HTML with XSLT Hack 84. Work Around Products Without Images Hack 85. Syndicate a List of Books with RSS Hack 86. Import Data Directly into Excel Hack 87. Program AWS with SOAP and VB.NET Hack 88. Program AWS with SOAP::Lite and Perl Hack 89. Program AWS with NuSOAP and PHP Hack 90. Create a Wireless Wish List Hack 91. Make Product Titles Shorter Hack 92. Encode Text for URLs Hack 93. Cache Amazon Images Locally Hack 94. Cache AWS Responses Locally Hack 95. Create an Amazon AIM Bot Hack 96. Compare International Sales Hack 97. Program AWS with Mozilla Hack 98. Search or Browse Amazon with Watson Hack 99. Add Cover Art to Your Digital Music Collection Hack 100. Using All Consuming's SOAP and REST Interfaces Colophon Index [ Team LiB ] [ Team LiB ] Copyright Copyright © 2003 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O'Reilly & Associates books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://safari.oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 [email protected] . Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O'Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. The association between the image of a machete and Amazon is a trademark of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. The trademarks "Hacks Books" and "The Hacks Series," and related trade dress, are owned by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. AMAZON, AMAZON.COM, AMAZON.COM AUCTIONS, AMAZON.CO.UK, AMAZON.DE, AMAZON.FR, LISTMANIA, 1-CLICK, PURCHASE CIRCLES, and other marks indicated in this book are registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its subsidiaries, in the United States and other countries. AMAZON HONOR SYSTEM, PAYPAGE, QUICK-CLICK, zSHOPS, and other Amazon.com graphics, logos, page headers, button icons, scripts, and service names are trademarks or trade dress of Amazon.com, Inc. or its subsidiaries. Amazon.com's trademarks and trade dress may not be used in connection with any product or service that is not Amazon.com's, in any manner that is likely to cause confusion among customers, or in any manner that disparages or discredits Amazon.com. All other trademarks not owned by Amazon.com or its subsidiaries are the property of their respective owners, who may or may not be affiliated with, connected to, or sponsored by Amazon.com or its subsidiaries. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. [ Team LiB ] [ Team LiB ] Credits About the Author Contributors Acknowledgments [ Team LiB ] [ Team LiB ] About the Author Paul Bausch is an accomplished Web Application Developer, and is a cocreator of the popular weblog software Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/). He cowrote We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs (John Wiley & Sons), and posts thoughts and photos almost daily to his personal weblog onfocus (http://www.onfocus.com/). [ Team LiB ] [ Team LiB ] Contributors The following people contributed their hacks, writing, and inspiration to this book: Tim Allwine is a Senior Software Engineer at O'Reilly & Associates.